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About

Wasuke Hiiragi is a researcher in human-robot interaction, focusing on how mobile robots can coexist comfortably with people in public spaces. His work addresses a fundamental challenge: the discomfort people often feel when encountering robots whose intentions are unclear. Hiiragi’s major contribution is the development of a “previous announcement” method, where a robot uses a 3D CG face interface to verbally and visually signal its upcoming actions—such as turning or stopping—before executing them. This approach, detailed in his most-cited paper (2020, 7 citations), aims to make robot behavior more intuitive and socially acceptable. He also explored social norm-based collision avoidance, proposing path planning that follows human conventions like “keeping to the right” to reduce pedestrian confusion (2018, 3 citations). Earlier in his career, Hiiragi contributed to digital preservation with a policy-based system for institutional web archiving (2004, 3 citations). While his citation counts are modest, his work is notable for its practical, user-centered approach to designing robots that communicate their intentions, a key step toward seamless human-robot coexistence in everyday environments.