Jesse Smith

University of Florida, Meta (United States)

Papers

Total Citations

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About

Jesse Smith’s research sits at the intersection of human-robot interaction, virtual agents, and multimodal communication, exploring how people perceive and respond to non-human entities. Smith’s most-cited work, “Wow, You Are Terrible at This!” (2020, 8 citations), investigates a compelling question: does the embodiment of a virtual agent—whether a mouse, robot, or human—affect how seriously people take critical feedback? This study challenges assumptions about trust and social dynamics with artificial agents, revealing that appearance and feedback style significantly shape user reactions. Building on this, Smith’s 2021 paper “Toward a One-interaction Data-driven Guide” (2 citations) advances practical robotics by proposing a pipeline that captures human co-speech gestures via motion capture, retargets them to robots, and selects optimal gestures for ambiguous route instructions. This work bridges human communication nuance with robotic clarity, aiming for more intuitive human-robot collaboration. Though early in citation impact, Smith’s contributions are notable for their interdisciplinary rigor—combining psychology, computer science, and design—and for tackling under-explored questions about agent embodiment and gesture-driven instruction. Their research promises to inform how robots and virtual assistants can interact more naturally and effectively with people.