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About

Fabrizio Nunnari is a leading researcher at the intersection of human-robot interaction, affective computing, and socially interactive agents. His work focuses on designing intelligent systems that can perceive, interpret, and respond to human emotional states, particularly in industrial and collaborative settings. A major contribution is his development of a human-driven control architecture for collaborative robots (cobots) that promotes good mental health by adapting production cell behavior to the operator’s emotional well-being—a concept that has garnered 17 citations. Nunnari also explores the use of Pleasure-Arousal-Dominance (PAD) models for emotional co-regulation, enabling socially interactive industrial robots to support optimal “Flow” experiences during assembly tasks. His research on mapping social signals from faces to robot-avatar behavior (3 citations) addresses the challenge of noisy real-world data. Beyond robotics, Nunnari has contributed to advanced visual interfaces for cultural heritage (9 citations) and serious games with socially interactive agents, co-authoring a chapter in the influential *Handbook on Socially Interactive Agents*. His work is notable for bridging theoretical models of emotion with practical, real-world applications in human-robot collaboration.