Venues: Dr. Zhao Han publishes in top HRI and robotics conferences (ACM HRI, IEEE ICRA, IEEE/RSJ IROS) and journals (THRI), as well as top cognitive science (CogSci) and linguistics conferences (INLG).
He also publishes in symposiums (AAAI FSS/SSS, AI-HRI) and workshops for community-building and networking, fostering friendship and collaboration.
Awards: Dr. Han has received the best long-paper award at INLG 2022, the best late-breaking report third prize at HRI 2022, and a best late-breaking report nominee at HRI 2023.
Open Science: Each publication has a webpage with a paper PDF, videos, code, data, presentations, and experimental materials.
Refereed Journals
Communicating Missing Causal Information to Explain a Robot’s Past Behavior
ACM Transactions on Human-Robot Interaction (THRI), 12(1), pp. 1-45, 2023
Best of Both Worlds? Combining Different Forms of Mixed Reality Deictic Gestures
ACM Transactions on Human-Robot Interaction (THRI), 12(1), pp. 1-23, 2023
Note: * Equal contribution
The Need for Verbal Robot Explanations and How People Would Like a Robot To Explain Itself
ACM Transactions on Human-Robot Interaction (THRI), 10(4), pp. 1-42, 2021
Design Guidelines for Human-Robot Interaction with Assistive Robot Manipulation Systems
Paladyn, Journal of Behavioral Robotics, 12(1), pp. 392-401, 2021
Building The Foundation of Robot Explanation Generation Using Behavior Trees
ACM Transactions on Human-Robot Interaction (THRI), 10(3), pp. 1-31, 2021
Refereed Conference Proceedings
Anywhere Projected AR for Robot Communication: A Mid-Air Fog Screen-Robot System
2025 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), 2025
Reactive or Proactive? How Robots Should Explain Failures
2024 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), 2024
Note: Top HRI conference. 24.9% acceptance rate.
(Gestures Vaguely): The Effects of Robots’ Use of Abstract Pointing Gestures in Large-Scale Environments
2024 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), 2024
Note: *Equal contribution. Top HRI conference. 24.9% acceptance rate.
Towards Reproducible Language-Based HRI Experiments: Open-Sourcing a Generalized Experiment Project
2024 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), 2024
Note: 61.3% acceptance rate (Short Contribution)
Exploring the Naturalness of Cognitive Status Informed Referring Form Selection Models
The 16th ACL International Conference on Natural Language Generation (INLG), 2023
Note: * Equal contribution
Evaluating Cognitive Status-Informed Referring Form Selection for Human-Robot Interactions
2023 Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci), 2023
Note: 43.4% acceptance rate (380/875)
Crossing Reality: Comparing Physical and Virtual Robot Deixis
2023 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), 2023
Note: * Equal contribution; 25.2% acceptance rate
Fresh Start: Encouraging Politeness in Wakeword-Driven Human-Robot Interaction
2023 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), 2023
Note: 25.2% acceptance rate
Givenness Hierarchy Informed Optimal Document Planning for Situated Human-Robot Interaction
2022 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2022
Note: * Equal contribution; 48% acceptance rate (1,740/3,579)
Evaluating Referring Form Selection Models in Partially-Known Environments
The 15th ACL International Conference on Natural Language Generation (INLG), 2022
🏆 Best Long-Paper Award
Projecting Robot Navigation Paths: Hardware and Software for Projected AR
2022 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), 2022
Note: 24% acceptance rate
Teacher, Teammate, Subordinate, Friend: Generating Norm Violation Responses Grounded in Role-based Relational Norms
2022 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), 2022
Note: 24% acceptance rate
Investigation of Multiple Resource Theory Design Principles on Robot Teleoperation and Workload Management
2021 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2021
Note: 49% acceptance rate (1,946/4,005)
Going Cognitive: A Demonstration of the Utility of Task-General Cognitive Architectures for Adaptive Robotic Task Performance
2020 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2020
Note: * Equal contribution; 47% acceptance rate (1,409/2,996)
Towards Mobile Multi-Task Manipulation in a Confined and Integrated Environment with Irregular Objects
2020 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2020
Note: 42% acceptance rate (1,483/3,512)
The Effects of Proactive Release Behaviors During Human-Robot Handovers
2019 14th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), 2019
Note: 28% acceptance rate
An Interactive Circular Visual Analytic Tool for Visualization of Web Data
2016 IEEE/WIC/ACM International Conference on Web Intelligence (WI), 2016
FIMaaS: Scalable Frequent Itemset Mining-as-a-Service on Cloud for Non-Expert Miners
2015 International Conference on Big Data Applications and Services (BigDAS), 2015
Edge-based mining of frequent subgraphs from graph streams
2015 International Conference on Knowledge-Based and Intelligent Information & Engineering Systems (KES), 2015
Refereed Workshop Papers and Extended Abstracts
Do Results in Experiments with Virtual Robots in Augmented Reality Transfer To Physical Robots? An Experiment Design
4th Workshop YOUR Study Design! Participatory critique and refinement of human-robot interaction user studies, 2024
To Understand Indicators of Robots’ Vision Capabilities
2024 International Workshop on Virtual, Augmented, and Mixed-Reality for Human-Robot Interactions at HRI 2024, 2024
Designing Indicators to Show a Robot’s Physical Vision Capability
The 31st IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces Abstracts and Workshops (IEEE VRW), 2024
Note: Poster submission
Causal-HRI: Causal Learning for Human-Robot Interaction
2024 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), Workshop Abstract, 2024
3rd Workshop on Inclusive HRI: Equity and Diversity in Design, Application, Methods, and Community
2024 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), Workshop Abstract, 2024
The Importance of Memory for Language-Capable Robots
XRDS: Crossroads, The ACM Magazine for Students, 31(1), 2023
Toward Open-World Human-Robot Interaction: What Types of Gestures Are Used in Task-Based Open-World Referential Communication?
The 27th Workshop on the Semantics and Pragmatics of Dialogue (SemDial), 2023
Inclusive HRI II: Equity and Diversity in Design, Application, Methods, and Community
2023 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), Workshop Abstract, 2023
Towards Improved Replicability of Human Studies in Human-Robot Interaction: Recommendations for Formalized Reporting
2023 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), Late-Breaking Report (LBR), 2023
🏆 Best LBR Nominee
Mixed-Reality Robot Behavior Replay: A System Implementation
2022 AAAI Fall Symposium on The Artificial Intelligence for Human-Robot Interaction (AI-HRI), 2022
Towards Formalizing HRI Data Collection Processes
The 4th Annual Workshop on Novel and Emerging Test Methods & Metrics for Effective HRI at HRI 2022, 2022
Towards an Understanding of Physical vs Virtual Robot Appendage Design
The International Workshop on Virtual, Augmented, and Mixed-Reality for Human-Robot Interactions at HRI 2022, 2022
Note: *equal contribution
“Why Didn’t I Do It?” A Study Design to Evaluate Robot Explanations
HRI 2022 Workshop YOUR study design! Participatory critique and refinement of participants’ studies, 2022
Causal Robot Communication Inspired by Observational Learning Insights
2022 AAAI Spring Symposium on Closing the Assessment Loop: Communicating Proficiency and Intent in Human-Robot Teaming, 2022
A Task Design for Studying Referring Behaviors for Linguistic HRI
2022 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), Late-Breaking Report (LBR), 2022
🏆 Best LBR Award, Third Prize
Projection Mapping Implementation: Enabling Direct Externalization of Perception Results and Action Intent to Improve Robot Explainability
2020 AAAI Fall Symposium on The Artificial Intelligence for Human-Robot Interaction (AI-HRI), 2020
Reasons People Want Explanations After Unrecoverable Pre-Handover Failures
ICRA 2020 Workshop on Human-Robot Handovers, 2020
Towards A Robot Explanation System: A Survey and Our Approach to State Summarization, Storage and Querying, and Human Interface
2019 AAAI Fall Symposium on The Artificial Intelligence for Human-Robot Interaction (AI-HRI), 2019
Note: Full paper, 8 pages
Theses
Robot Explanations: Preferences, Generation, and Communication
Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Massachusetts Lowell, 2021
Delivering Scalable Frequent Pattern Mining for Non-Expert Data Miners
M.S. Thesis, University of Manitoba (Canada), 2016
Other Publications
Proceedings of the AI-HRI Symposium at AAAI-FSS 2022
2022 AAAI Fall Symposium on The Artificial Intelligence for Human-Robot Interaction (AI-HRI), 2022
AI-HRI 2021 Proceedings
2021 AAAI Fall Symposium on The Artificial Intelligence for Human-Robot Interaction (AI-HRI), 2021
Proceedings of the AI-HRI Symposium at AAAI-FSS 2020
2020 AAAI Fall Symposium on The Artificial Intelligence for Human-Robot Interaction (AI-HRI), 2020
Investigating Human-Robot Handover Release Behaviors
2018 New England Manipulation Symposium, 2018
Note: Poster.
