Lenny Siol

Papers

Total Citations

H-Index

About

Lenny Siol is a researcher at the forefront of human-robot interaction (HRI) and game design, specializing in integrating social robots into interactive digital environments. His major contributions center on developing accessible toolkits that bridge the gap between robotics and game engines, enabling robots to serve as storytellers, game masters, or embodied characters. Siol’s most cited work, "The NarRobot Plugin" (2023, 5 citations), introduces a plugin connecting the social robot Reeti to the Unity game engine, facilitating novel HRI applications in gaming. He further expanded this impact with "PePUT: A Unity Toolkit for the Social Robot Pepper" (2023, 4 citations), which provides a comprehensive Python-based toolkit for controlling Pepper’s speech, tablet, animation, and navigation within Unity. These tools lower the barrier for researchers and developers, allowing them to prototype immersive, robot-driven experiences without deep robotics expertise. Siol’s work is notable for its practical, open-source approach, directly empowering game designers and HRI scholars to explore new forms of interactive storytelling and embodied AI. His contributions are shaping how robots can be seamlessly integrated into virtual worlds, with growing influence in both academic and applied contexts.