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About

Dirk Heylen is a prominent researcher whose work spans human-robot interaction, social touch, multimodal communication, and virtual agents. Based at the University of Twente, Heylen has made foundational contributions to understanding how artificial agents — robots and virtual humans — can engage more naturally and meaningfully with people. Among his most recognized achievements is the development of the Corpus of Social Touch (CoST), introduced in 2014 and cited nearly 100 times across related publications, which provided the research community with essential data for automatic recognition of touch gestures in social contexts. His 2023 survey on touch technology in affective human-robot and virtual-human interactions further cemented his role as a leading voice in this emerging field. Heylen has also advanced multimodal conversational systems, including work on end-of-turn prediction in multi-party settings and function markup languages for expressive virtual agents. His research extends to real-world applications, exploring how social robots can support autistic children, integrate into domestic environments, and exhibit believable gaze and unpredictable behaviors that foster genuine engagement. With over 400 cumulative citations across his most influential work, Heylen's interdisciplinary contributions continue to shape how researchers design socially intelligent, emotionally responsive artificial agents.