Y. Nakata

Papers

Total Citations

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About

Y. Nakata is a pioneering researcher in human-robot interaction and autonomous navigation, with a focus on developing intelligent home robots capable of seamlessly collaborating with people. Their foundational work, particularly in the early 2000s, established core techniques for enabling robots to detect, localize, and approach humans in indoor environments. Nakata’s most cited paper (37 citations) introduced a novel system that estimates the 3D position of a human’s head and face using a depth-from-focus method, integrating motion detection, Hough transforms, and statistical color models. This breakthrough directly enabled robots to locate and navigate toward people, as demonstrated in their work on mobile home robot localization and approaching (11 citations). Nakata also advanced multi-modal interaction, creating an interface that allows humans to teach robots about objects and places through speech and gestures, generating environmental maps (24 citations). These contributions laid critical groundwork for intuitive, socially aware robotics, influencing subsequent research in assistive and service robots. Nakata’s work remains a touchstone for engineers designing robots that understand and respond to human presence.