Papers
12
Total Citations
83
H-Index
6
About
Yukiko Nakano is a leading researcher in human-robot interaction (HRI), focusing on how robots and virtual agents can communicate naturally through nonverbal behaviors. Her key research areas include gaze control, gesture generation, and cultural adaptation in multiparty interactions. Nakano’s most influential work, “Generating Robot Gaze on the Basis of Participation Roles and Dominance Estimation in Multiparty Interaction” (2015, 20 citations), pioneered models that enable robots to adjust their gaze based on social roles and power dynamics, making conversations more intuitive. She also contributed to the “Symbiotic Society with Avatars (SSA)” (2023, 10 citations), exploring how avatar robots extend human capabilities. Her cross-cultural study on joining small groups (2025, 8 citations) reveals how politeness norms in Japan and Sweden shape human-robot interaction. Nakano’s work on iconic gesture generation (2016, 7 citations) and co-speech gesture animation (2020, 4 citations) advances robot expressiveness. With over 80 citations across her top papers, she has shaped the design of socially aware robots that understand participation roles, dominance, and cultural context—critical for deploying robots in real-world group settings.
Research Focus
Key Achievements
Top Papers
- 1
- 2Gaze in HRI11 citations · 2012
- 3Symbiotic Society with Avatars (SSA)10 citations · 2023
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- 5
- 6Generating iconic gestures based on graphic data analysis and clustering7 citations · 2016
- 7Generating Iconic Gestures based on Graphic Data Analysis and Clustering5 citations · 2016
- 8
- 9
- 10A two-layered approach to communicative artifacts3 citations · 2007