Kathrin Janowski

About

Kathrin Janowski is a researcher specializing in human-robot interaction (HRI), socially assistive robotics, and adaptive communication systems. Her work sits at the intersection of social robotics, natural language generation, and multimodal interaction design, with a particular focus on developing robots capable of meaningful, personalized engagement with humans. Janowski's early influential contributions examined the role of gaze in grounding — the communicative process by which shared understanding is established — resulting in a widely cited model of gaze behavior for social robots (65 citations). This foundational work shaped subsequent research on how robots can more naturally collaborate with people. She has since made significant strides in healthcare robotics, exploring how robots can adapt their linguistic style, politeness strategies, and personality to better serve elderly users and promote health-related behaviors, including nutrition monitoring through systems like the "Drink-O-Mender" prototype (27 citations). Her research demonstrates consistent concern for real-world usability, incorporating human-in-the-loop design approaches and explicit user feedback to refine robotic companions. Her co-authored chapter on Adaptive Artificial Personalities, published in a landmark 20-year retrospective on embodied conversational agents, reflects her standing as a contributor to the broader intelligent systems community. With over 240 cumulative citations, Janowski's work meaningfully advances the development of socially intelligent, user-centered robotic assistants.

Research Focus

Key Achievements

Top Papers

1. 1
   Exploring a Model of Gaze for Grounding in Multimodal HRI

   65 citations · 2014
2. 2
   Adaptive linguistic style for an assistive robotic health companion based on explicit human feedback

   41 citations · 2019
3. 3
   Investigating Politeness Strategies and Their Persuasiveness for a Robotic Elderly Assistant

   37 citations · 2016
4. 4
   Sozial interagierende Roboter in der Pflege

   32 citations · 2018
5. 5
   Drink-O-Mender

   27 citations · 2018
6. 6
   Giving Robots a Voice: Human-in-the-Loop Voice Creation and open-ended Labeling

   11 citations · 2024
7. 7
   Adaptive Artificial Personalities

   11 citations · 2022
8. 8
   Insights on usability and user feedback for an assistive robotic health companion with adaptive linguistic style

   9 citations · 2019
9. 9
   Towards a robotic dietitian with adaptive linguistic style

   7 citations · 2019
10. 10
    Modeling Gaze Mechanisms for Grounding in HRI

    3 citations · 2014

Key Collaborators

Contact & Links