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About

Kai-Florian Richter is a researcher advancing the frontier of human-robot interaction, with a primary focus on making robot teams more understandable and collaborative. His work centers on developing mechanisms for robots to provide verbal explanations of their actions and intentions, drawing on principles like Grice's maxims to ensure communication is clear and natural. Richter’s major contributions include designing architectures for collaborating robot teams—such as those using Pepper robots—that can articulate their current, planned, or suggested actions to human partners, thereby bridging the gap between machine logic and human comprehension. His research also explores conflict detection and resolution in table-top scenarios, as well as visually grounded representations of a robot’s “state of mind” using fuzzy inference systems. With over 30 citations across his most-cited papers, including “Verbal Explanations by Collaborating Robot Teams” (13 citations), Richter’s impact is evident in his pioneering work on understandable autonomy. His earlier research on schematized aspect maps for robot guidance further demonstrates his long-standing commitment to creating abstract, human-friendly interfaces for robot navigation. Richter’s achievements are shaping a future where robots are not just functional, but truly communicative partners.