Ammar Mahdhaoui

Orange (France), Sorbonne Université, Institut Systèmes Intelligents et de Robotique

Papers

Total Citations

486

H-Index

About

Ammar Mahdhaoui’s research lies at the dynamic intersection of human-robot interaction, multimodal communication, and social signal processing. His most influential work, “Interpersonal Synchrony: A Survey of Evaluation Methods across Disciplines” (2012), has garnered over 440 citations, establishing him as a key voice in understanding how individuals coordinate temporally during social exchanges. This foundational survey synthesizes methods from psychology, computer science, and linguistics to analyze the complex, multimodal nature of synchrony—a phenomenon critical for studying social bonding, developmental disorders, and collaborative behavior. Mahdhaoui also pioneered real-time frameworks for generating robot and agent backchannels, as demonstrated in his 2009 study on storytelling interactions. By building the multimodal corpus ENTERFACE_STEAD, he enabled systematic evaluation of how embodied agents like the AIBO robot or GRETA avatar can produce naturalistic feedback—nods, vocalizations, or gestures—to enhance human engagement. His work bridges engineering and cognitive science, offering practical tools for designing more responsive, socially aware artificial systems. Through these contributions, Mahdhaoui has advanced both the theoretical understanding of interpersonal coordination and the applied design of intuitive human-machine interfaces.