Brandon Heenan

Papers

Total Citations

H-Index

About

Brandon Heenan’s research lies at the intersection of human-robot interaction (HRI), social robotics, and proxemics, with a focus on designing socially intelligent behaviors that make robots more natural and intuitive communication partners. His most cited work, “Designing social greetings in human robot interaction” (2014, 54 citations), makes a foundational contribution by operationalizing a greetings model as a state machine, drawing directly from Kendon’s observations of human greetings and Hall’s proxemics theory. This work demonstrates that grounding robot behaviors in established social science can significantly enhance a robot’s perceived social intelligence. In a related paper (2013), Heenan further explores how proxemic zones and greeting rituals, when implemented on a robot, can convey social awareness and improve user experience. While his citation count is modest, his work is notable for its rigorous, theory-driven approach—bridging sociology and robotics to create more effective and comfortable human-robot encounters. Heenan’s research is especially valuable for students and engineers seeking to design robots that navigate social spaces with the subtlety and appropriateness expected in human interaction.