Max Robotics — Global Service Robot Directory + US Certification

About

Jun-ichi Imai’s research lies at the intersection of human-robot interaction and computer vision, with a central focus on enabling robots to function intelligently in occlusion-rich, everyday environments. His major contributions address a critical challenge: how can a robot maintain stable visual tracking and social awareness when its view is blocked by furniture or people? Imai pioneered methods for autonomous switching between visual targets during occlusion (2008, 9 citations) and developed techniques for three-dimensional field-of-view estimation (2012, 3 citations) that allow robots to infer what a human user can and cannot see. This work extends into cognitive robotics, where he created systems that recognize a user’s false beliefs by modeling differences in perspective (2010, 2 citations). His notable achievement includes integrating omni-directional audio-visual speaker detection for mobile robots (2007, 2 citations), combining sound and sight for robust human tracking. By bridging perceptual gaps between humans and machines, Imai’s research lays essential groundwork for truly symbiotic robots that can anticipate user needs and adapt to cluttered, dynamic living spaces—a vital step toward practical home-assistance robots.