Tetsunori Kobayashi
Papers
26
Total Citations
507
H-Index
10
About
Tetsunori Kobayashi is a pioneering figure in social robotics, whose career has been defined by a singular focus: enabling robots to participate naturally in human group conversation. His foundational work on conversational strategy, beginning in the early 2000s, established computational models that allow a robot to intelligently decide when to observe and when to take a turn within a multi-party dialogue—a critical challenge for human-robot interaction. His 2008 paper, "Social Robots that Interact with People," has garnered 127 citations, serving as a key reference in the field. Kobayashi’s research is particularly notable for its deep understanding of group dynamics, as seen in his work on the "facilitation robot" as a fourth participant, designed to regulate engagement density in conversations of four—a number he identifies as uniquely complex. His contributions extend from early hardware achievements, such as the musician robot WABOT-2 (1987), to sophisticated frameworks for communication activation. By leveraging paralinguistic information like prosody and posture, Kobayashi has advanced the transparency of conversational protocols, creating robots that are not just reactive, but active, socially aware participants in human interaction.
Research Focus
Key Achievements
Top Papers
- 1Social Robots that Interact with People127 citations · 2008
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- 4The robot musician ‘wabot-2’ (waseda robot-2)55 citations · 1987
- 5Conversation Robot Participating in Group Conversation54 citations · 2003
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- 7Conversation robot participating in and activating a group communication19 citations · 2009
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