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


Zhao Han and Holly A. Yanco
Communicating Missing Causal Information to Explain a Robot’s Past Behavior
ACM Transactions on Human-Robot Interaction (THRI), 12(1), pp. 1-45, 2023

Landon Brown*, Jared Hamilton*, Zhao Han*†, Albert Phan*, Thao Phung*, Eric Hansen, Nhan Tran, and Tom Williams
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

Zhao Han, Elizabeth Phillips (George Mason University), and Holly A. Yanco
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

Alexander Wilkinson, Michael Gonzales, Patrick Hoey, David Kontak, Dian Wang, Noah Torname, Amelia Sinclaire, Zhao Han, Jordan Allspaw, Robert Platt, and Holly A. Yanco
Design Guidelines for Human-Robot Interaction with Assistive Robot Manipulation Systems
Paladyn, Journal of Behavioral Robotics, 12(1), pp. 392-401, 2021

Zhao Han, Daniel Giger, Jordan Allspaw, Michael S. Lee (CMU), Henny Admoni (CMU), and Holly A. Yanco
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


Gregory LeMasurier, Alvika Gautam, Zhao Han, Jacob Crandall, and Holly Yanco
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.

Annie Huang*, Alyson Ranucci*, Adam Stogsdill*, Grace Clark, Keenan Schott, Mark Higger, Zhao Han, and Tom Williams
(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.

Uthman Tijani, Hong Wang, and Zhao Han
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)

Gabriel Del Castillo*, Grace Clark*, Zhao Han*, and Tom Williams
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

Zhao Han and Tom Williams
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)

Zhao Han*, Yifei Zhu*, Albert Phan, Fernando Sandoval Garza, Amia Castro, Tom Williams
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

Ruchen Wen, Alyssa Hanson, Zhao Han, Tom Williams
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

Kevin Spevak*, Zhao Han*, Tom Williams, and Neil T. Dantam
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)

Zhao Han, Polina Rygina, Tom Williams
Evaluating Referring Form Selection Models in Partially-Known Environments
The 15th ACL International Conference on Natural Language Generation (INLG), 2022
🏆 Best Long-Paper Award

Zhao Han, Jenna Parrillo, Alexander Wilkinson, Holly A. Yanco, and Tom Williams
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

Ruchen Wen, Zhao Han and Tom Williams
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

Zhao Han, Adam Norton, Eric McCann, Lisa Baraniecki, Will Ober, Dave Shane, Anna Skinner and Holly A. Yanco
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)

Tyler Frasca* (Tufts), Zhao Han*, Jordan Allspaw, Holly Yanco, and Matthias Scheutz (Tufts)
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)

Zhao Han, Jordan Allspaw, Gregory LeMasurier, Jenna Parrillo, Daniel Giger, S. Reza Ahmadzadeh and Holly A. Yanco
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)

Zhao Han and Holly A. Yanco
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

Patrick M. J. Dubois, Zhao Han, Fan Jiang and Carson K. Leung
An Interactive Circular Visual Analytic Tool for Visualization of Web Data
2016 IEEE/WIC/ACM International Conference on Web Intelligence (WI), 2016

Zhao Han and Carson K. Leung
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

Alfredo Cuzzocrea, Zhao Han, Fan Jiang, Carson K. Leung and Hao Zhang
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


Xiangfei Kong and Zhao Han
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

Uthman Tijani and Zhao Han
Prototyping Mid-Air Display for Anywhere Robot Communication With Projected Spatial AR
2024 International Workshop on Virtual, Augmented, and Mixed-Reality for Human-Robot Interactions at HRI 2024, 2024

Hong Wang, Tam Do, and Zhao Han
To Understand Indicators of Robots’ Vision Capabilities
2024 International Workshop on Virtual, Augmented, and Mixed-Reality for Human-Robot Interactions at HRI 2024, 2024

Hong Wang, Tam Do, and Zhao Han
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

Jiaee Cheong, Nikhil Churamani, Luke Guerdan, Tabitha Edith Lee, Zhao Han, and Hatice Gunes
Causal-HRI: Causal Learning for Human-Robot Interaction
2024 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), Workshop Abstract, 2024

Raj Korpan*, Amy Eguchi, Zhao Han, Anastasia K. Ostrowski, Sindhu Ravindranath, and Ana Tanevska
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

Rafael Sousa Silva, Zhao Han, and Tom Williams
The Importance of Memory for Language-Capable Robots
XRDS: Crossroads, The ACM Magazine for Students, 31(1), 2023

Mark Higger, Polina Rygina, Logan Daigler, Lara Ferreira Bezerra, Zhao Han, and Tom Williams
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

Ana Tanevska, Shruti Chandra, Giulia Barbareschi, Amy Eguchi, Zhao Han, Raj Korpan, Anastasia K. Ostrowski, Giulia Perugia, Sindhu Ravindranath, Katie Seaborn, Katie Winkle
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

Shelly Bagchi*, Patrick Holthaus, Gloria Beraldo, Emmanuel Senft, Daniel Hernández García, Zhao Han, Suresh Kumaar Jayaraman, Alessandra Rossi, Connor Esterwood, Antonio Andriella, and Paul Pridham
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

Zhao Han, Tom Williams, Holly A. Yanco
Mixed-Reality Robot Behavior Replay: A System Implementation
2022 AAAI Fall Symposium on The Artificial Intelligence for Human-Robot Interaction (AI-HRI), 2022

Zhao Han and Tom Williams
Towards Formalizing HRI Data Collection Processes
The 4th Annual Workshop on Novel and Emerging Test Methods & Metrics for Effective HRI at HRI 2022, 2022

Zhao Han*, Albert Phan*, Amia Castro*, Fernando Sandoval Garza* and Tom Williams
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

Gregory LeMasurier, Alvika Gautam, Zhao Han, Jacob W. Crandall, Holly A. Yanco
“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

Zhao Han, Boyoung Kim, Holly A. Yanco, Tom Williams
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

Zhao Han and Tom Williams
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

Zhao Han, Alexander Wilkinson, Jenna Parrillo, Jordan Allspaw, and Holly A. Yanco
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

Zhao Han and Holly A. Yanco
Reasons People Want Explanations After Unrecoverable Pre-Handover Failures
ICRA 2020 Workshop on Human-Robot Handovers, 2020

Zhao Han, Jordan Allspaw, Adam Norton and Holly Yanco
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


Zhao Han
Robot Explanations: Preferences, Generation, and Communication
Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Massachusetts Lowell, 2021

Zhao Han
Delivering Scalable Frequent Pattern Mining for Non-Expert Data Miners
M.S. Thesis, University of Manitoba (Canada), 2016

Other Publications


Zhao Han, Emmanuel Senft, Muneeb I. Ahmad, Shelly Bagchi, Amir Yazdani, Jason R. Wilson, Boyoung Kim, Ruchen Wen, Justin W. Hart, Daniel Hernández García, Matteo Leonetti, Ross Mead, Reuth Mirsky, Ahalya Prabhakar, Megan L. Zimmerman
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

Reuth Mirsky, Megan Zimmerman, Muneed Ahmad, Shelly Bagchi, Felix Gervits, Zhao Han, Justin Hart, Daniel Hernández García, Matteo Leonetti, Ross Mead, Emmanuel Senft, Jivko Sinapov, Jason Wilson
AI-HRI 2021 Proceedings
2021 AAAI Fall Symposium on The Artificial Intelligence for Human-Robot Interaction (AI-HRI), 2021

Shelly Bagchi, Jason R. Wilson, Muneeb I. Ahmad, Christian Dondrup, Zhao Han, Justin W. Hart, Matteo Leonetti, Katrin Lohan, Ross Mead, Emmanuel Senft, Jivko Sinapov and Megan L. Zimmerman
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

Zhao Han and Holly Yanco
Investigating Human-Robot Handover Release Behaviors
2018 New England Manipulation Symposium, 2018
Note: Poster.

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