Yoshihito Funaki

Nara Institute of Science and Technology

Papers

Total Citations

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About

Yoshihito Funaki is a robotics researcher specializing in human-robot interaction and assistive technologies, with a focus on developing intelligent motion controllers for caregiving robots. His key research areas include human transfer assistance, Bayesian optimization for robot learning, and comfortable motion generation for patient handling. Funaki’s major contributions center on creating data-efficient methods to train robots that assist caregivers in transferring patients between beds and wheelchairs—a physically demanding task that often leads to caregiver injury. His 2017 paper, “Generation of comfortable lifting motion for a human transfer assistant robot” (15 citations), introduces algorithms to personalize lifting motions for individual comfort, while his 2016 work on Bayesian optimization (10 citations) demonstrates how robots can learn optimal care motions with minimal human input. By addressing the challenge of designing comfortable, individualized transfer motions—a problem previously underexplored—Funaki’s research directly improves both patient well-being and caregiver ergonomics. His work stands out for its practical impact on reducing the physical burden in nursing care, making assistive robotics more adaptive and user-friendly.