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About

Hirotada Ueda is a researcher whose work sits at the intersection of human-robot interaction, ubiquitous computing, and assistive technology. His research explores how conversational and companion robots can be meaningfully integrated into everyday environments — from the home kitchen to the driver's seat — to support, motivate, and protect users across different life stages. Among his most notable contributions is his investigation of driving assistance for elderly drivers using conversation robots, and his finding that a robot's presence and verbal engagement can enhance safety during simulated driving tasks. His cooking support research demonstrated that projecting recipe information onto ingredients, combined with a robot companion, not only aids novice cooks procedurally but also increases their motivation and enjoyment. These two threads — safety and well-being through social robotics — define much of his scholarly identity. Ueda has also examined robots as long-term cohabitants, analyzing extended interaction logs to understand how people naturally communicate with intelligent home artifacts. With additional work spanning educational robots and multi-robot navigation systems, his research consistently asks how intelligent systems can enrich human daily life. Collectively, his papers have accumulated roughly 64 citations, reflecting a steady and meaningful contribution to applied human-robot interaction research.