Papers
32
Total Citations
365
H-Index
11
About
Akinori Ito is a pioneering researcher in human-robot interaction, with a particular focus on the psychological and physical factors that shape how humans perceive and accept robots. His work spans three key areas: robot size perception and psychological threat, speech recognition in noisy robotic environments, and human-robot communication through non-verbal cues. Ito’s most impactful contribution is his systematic investigation of how robot height influences human comfort and fear, with his 2008 paper “Are bigger robots scary?” (28 citations) and related studies (25 and 14 citations) establishing foundational knowledge for designing socially acceptable service robots. He also made significant advances in enabling robots to hear clearly despite their own noise, developing novel spectral subtraction methods for internal noise suppression in small robots (41 citations). His work on eye-contact robots (34 citations) explores the philosophical question of why robots need bodies for meaningful communication. With over 250 total citations across his top ten papers, Ito’s research has practical implications for care robots, agricultural vehicles, and child-interactive robots, including a semi-autonomous navigation system (23 citations) and a robot-avatar concept for improving elderly user familiarity (12 citations). His interdisciplinary approach—combining engineering, psychology, and philosophy—continues to influence the design of robots that are both functional and psychologically acceptable.
Research Focus
Key Achievements
Top Papers
- 1Development of a teleoperation system for agricultural vehicles55 citations · 2008
- 2Internal noise suppression for speech recognition by small robots41 citations · 2005
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- 9Influence of the height of a robot on comfortableness of verbal interaction13 citations · 2016
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