Yaxin | Human Robot Interaction

I am a Ph.D. candidate in Computer Science with a minor in Communication Arts at UW-Madison advised by Prof. Bilge Mutlu. My research lies at the intersection of human robot interaction (HRI), embodied AI, and accessibility. I study intelligent robots that support people's inclusive engagement with the social world and the physical world, and understand how these robots can be meaningfully integrated into human environments.

News

Started my visit at Singapore Management University 🇸🇬 hosted by Prof. Tony Tang
Finished a robotics research internship at the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovaion (Miraikan) 🇯🇵 hosted by Dr. Hironobu Takagi and Dr. Chieko Asakawa
Finished a research internship at CMU HCII 🇺🇸 advised by Prof. Yasmine Kotturi and Prof. Jeffrey P. Bigham
Graduated from CMU MSCD advised by Prof. Henny Admoni
Graduated with first class honour from CUHK 🇭🇰 advised by Prof. Tien-Tsin Wong

Publication

All | Human Robot Interaction | Conversational Agent | Accessibility

Robot assisted group tour for blind people.

Robot-assisted Group Tours for Blind People
CHI 2026 paper [coming soon]

An AI-powered mobile robot supports blind people to join group tours with sighted visitors. The robot can provide contextual information and directions of nearby people, notify the guide and support navigation to follow the group.

Remote Robot for Place Attachment
HRI 2025 paper | video

Multi-party interactions in robotic telepresence to promote place attachment. Users were guided by a human guide or a virtual agent, and experienced the environment individually or with other users.

A robotic system built with an LLM agent and a semantic map

NarraGuide: an LLM-based Mobile Robot
UIST 2025 paper | video

A fully autonomous robotic system that provides LLM-powered narrative guidance for users to explore a remote geology museum through a dialogue-based interface.

A person sitting in a wheelchair in front of a monitor and talking to a remote conversational telepresence robot.

Conversational Robot for Homebound Older Adults
DIS 2024 paper | video

Explore the design and use of conversational telepresence robots to help homebound older adults interact with the external world.

A person seeing a social media webpage with five accessibility aids

SMART-TBI
ASSETS 2024 paper

Social Media Accessibility and Rehabilitation Toolkit for people with traumatic brain injury (SMART-TBI). The toolkit was designed to address the cognitive and communicative needs of individuals with TBI.

A sketch from the participatory design session.

Understanding Social Media Use by People with TBI
CHI 2023 paper

Conceptualize tools to address challenges in accessing Facebook with 10 adults with TBI through a participatory design study.

A person sitting in a sofa and talking to a conversational agent speaker.

Conversational Agent for People with TBI
ASSETS 2023 paper

Study TBI-related use of conversatioanl agents through a four-week at-home study to investigate use patterns, challenges, and design requirements.

An older adult points to the screen of a smart display.

Politeness Conversation Design for Older Adults
CHI 2022 paper | video

Designed conversational agents on for older adults based on politeness theory. Field studies revealed user personas with varied preferences in system politeness and user agency in the interaction.

An gif animation where a human and a robot take turns to create a tangram.

Social Robot for Collaborative Creative Activities
DIS 2021 paper | video

A mobile robot with social expressions collaborated with human in a creative activity where the robot and human took turns to create compositions using tangram pieces in an augmented projection space.

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