ByungOk Han

Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute

Papers

Total Citations

H-Index

About

ByungOk Han is a pioneering researcher in human-robot interaction and assistive robotics, with a focus on developing intelligent mobile systems that enhance human experiences and accessibility. His work spans three key areas: museum tour guide robotics, domain adaptation for autonomous navigation, and assistive technologies for the visually impaired. Han’s most influential work, "Museum tour guide robot with augmented reality" (2010, 30 citations), established foundational principles for deploying robots that naturally interact with and educate people in public spaces, combining robust localization with engaging augmented reality features. He further advanced autonomous navigation through his research on target-style-aware unsupervised domain adaptation for object detection (2021), addressing critical challenges in domain shift for mobility platforms. Most notably, Han’s recent contribution, "Space-Aware Instruction Tuning: Dataset and Benchmark for Guide Dog Robots Assisting the Visually Impaired" (2025), represents a groundbreaking step toward leveraging Vision-Language Models to create guide dog robots that can communicate intuitively with visually impaired users. His hybrid localization scheme (2011) also contributed to indoor navigation efficiency. Han’s work demonstrates a consistent commitment to making robots more perceptive, interactive, and socially beneficial—from entertaining museum visitors to empowering individuals with visual impairments.