Zhao Han

Director

zhaohan@usf.edu

08/2023→

Dr. Zhao Han is an Assistant Professor in the Computer Science and Engineering department at the University of South Florida, joining the faculty in August 2023.

His research lies broadly in human-robot interaction (HRI), robotics, artificial intelligence (AI), and augmented reality (AR). He focuses on designing, developing, and evaluating novel robotic systems and interactions, for embodied robots to be more capable and understandable while interacting and collaborating with humans.

He received the best long-paper award at INLG 2022 and the best late-breaking report third prize at HRI 2022. Previously, he had led teams to win multiple international and national robot competitions, including first place in the Panasonic Prototype 3D LiDAR Challenge and second place in the FetchIt Mobile Manipulation Challenge at ICRA 2019.

In addition to research, he received a university-wide Mines Diversity, Inclusion, and Access (DI&A) Award in 2022.

He holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from UMass Lowell, advised by AAAI Fellow Dr. Holly Yanco. He received his M.S. and B.S. degrees in Computer Science from the University of Manitoba in Canada.

Publications

Uthman Tijani, Hong Wang, and Zhao Han

Towards Reproducible Language-Based HRI Experiments: Open-Sourcing a Generalized Experiment Project

61.3% acceptance rate (Short Contribution)

Zhao Han and Tom Williams

Evaluating Cognitive Status-Informed Referring Form Selection for Human-Robot Interactions

43.4% acceptance rate (380/875)

https://zhaohanphd.com/publications/cogsci23-evaluating-cognitive-status-informed-referring-form-selection-for-human-robot-interactions/

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

https://zhaohanphd.com/publications/inclusive-hri-ii/

Zhao Han and Holly A. Yanco

Communicating Missing Causal Information to Explain a Robot’s Past Behavior

https://zhaohanphd.com/publications/thri22b-communicating-missing-causal-information-to-explain-a-robots-past-behavior/

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

* Equal contribution

https://zhaohanphd.com/publications/thri22-best-both-worlds-combining-different-forms-mixed-reality-deictic-gestures/

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

Best LBR Nominee

https://zhaohanphd.com/publications/hri23lbr-towards-improved-replicability-of-human-studies-in-human-robot-interaction-recommendations-for-formalized-reporting/

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

Crossing Reality: Comparing Physical and Virtual Robot Deixis

* Equal contribution; 25.2% acceptance rate

https://zhaohanphd.com/publications/hri23ar-crossing-reality-comparing-physical-and-virtual-robot-deixis/

Ruchen Wen, Alyssa Hanson, Zhao Han, and Tom Williams

Fresh Start: Encouraging Politeness in Wakeword-Driven Human-Robot Interaction

25.2% acceptance rate

https://zhaohanphd.com/publications/hri23wen-fresh-start-encouraging-politeness-in-wakeword-driven-human-robot-interaction/

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, and Megan L. Zimmerman

Proceedings of the AI-HRI Symposium at AAAI-FSS 2022

https://zhaohanphd.com/publications/ai-hri-2022-proceedings/

Zhao Han, Tom Williams, and Holly A. Yanco

Mixed-Reality Robot Behavior Replay: A System Implementation

https://zhaohanphd.com/publications/aihri22-mixed-reality-robot-behavior-replay-a-system-implementation/

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

Givenness Hierarchy Informed Optimal Document Planning for Situated Human-Robot Interaction

* Equal contribution; 48% acceptance rate (1,740/3,579)

https://zhaohanphd.com/publications/iros22-givenness-hierarchy-informed-optimal-sentence-planning-situated-human-robot-interaction/

Zhao Han, Polina Rygina, and Tom Williams

Evaluating Referring Form Selection Models in Partially-Known Environments

Best Long-Paper Award

https://zhaohanphd.com/publications/inlg22-evaluating-referring-form-selection-models-in-partially-known-environments/

Zhao Han and Tom Williams

Towards Formalizing HRI Data Collection Processes

https://zhaohanphd.com/publications/hri22tmm-towards-formalizing-hri-data-collection-processes/

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

Towards an Understanding of Physical vs Virtual Robot Appendage Design

*equal contribution

https://zhaohanphd.com/publications/vamhri22-towards-an-understanding-of-physical-vs-virtual-robot-appendage-design/

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

“Why Didn’t I Do It?” A Study Design to Evaluate Robot Explanations

https://zhaohanphd.com/publications/wysd22-why-didnt-i-do-it-a-study-design-to-evaluate-robot-explanations/

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

Causal Robot Communication Inspired by Observational Learning Insights

https://zhaohanphd.com/publications/aaai-sss22-causal-robot-communication-inspired-by-observational-learning-insights/

Zhao Han and Tom Williams

A Task Design for Studying Referring Behaviors for Linguistic HRI

Best LBR Award, Third Prize

https://zhaohanphd.com/publications/hri22lbr-a-task-design-for-studying-referring-behaviors-for-linguistic-hri/

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

Projecting Robot Navigation Paths: Hardware and Software for Projected AR

24% acceptance rate

https://zhaohanphd.com/publications/hri22b-projecting-robot-navigation-paths-hardware-and-software-for-projected-ar/

Ruchen Wen, Zhao Han and Tom Williams

Teacher, Teammate, Subordinate, Friend: Generating Norm Violation Responses Grounded in Role-based Relational Norms

24% acceptance rate

https://zhaohanphd.com/publications/hri22a-teacher-teammate-subordinate-friend-generating-norm-violation-responses-grounded-in-role-based-relational-norms/

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

https://zhaohanphd.com/publications/ai-hri-2021-proceedings/

Zhao Han

Robot Explanations: Preferences, Generation, and Communication

https://zhaohanphd.com/publications/phd-dissertation-robot-explanations-preferences-generation-communication/

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

https://zhaohanphd.com/publications/thri21b-need-verbal-robot-explanations-how-people-would-like-robot-explain-itself/

Alexander Wilkinson, Michael Gonzales, Patrick Hoey, David Kontak, Dian Wang, Noah Torname, Sam Laderoute, Zhao Han, Jordan Allspaw, Robert Platt, and Holly A. Yanco

Design Guidelines for Human-Robot Interaction with Assistive Robot Manipulation Systems

https://zhaohanphd.com/publications/paladyn21-design-guidelines-for-human-robot-interaction-with-assistive-robot-manipulation-systems/

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

49% acceptance rate (1,946/4,005)

https://zhaohanphd.com/publications/icra21-investigation-of-multiple-resource-theory-design-principles-robot-teleoperation-workload-management/

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

https://zhaohanphd.com/publications/thri21a-building-the-foundation-of-robot-explanation-generation-using-behavior-trees/

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

https://zhaohanphd.com/publications/ai-hri-2020-proceedings/

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

https://zhaohanphd.com/publications/aihri20-projection-mapping-implementation-enabling-direct-externalization-of-perception-results-and-action-intent-to-improve-robot-explainability/

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

* Equal contribution; 47% acceptance rate (1,409/2,996)

https://zhaohanphd.com/publications/iros20-going-cognitive-a-demonstration-of-the-utility-of-task-general-cognitive-architectures-for-adaptive-robotic-task-performance/

Zhao Han and Holly A. Yanco

Reasons People Want Explanations After Unrecoverable Pre-Handover Failures

https://zhaohanphd.com/publications/icra20ws-reasons-people-want-explanations-after-unrecoverable-pre-handover-failures/

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

42% acceptance rate (1,483/3,512)

https://zhaohanphd.com/publications/icra20-towards-mobile-multi-task-manipulation-in-a-confined-and-integrated-environment-with-irregular-objects/

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

Full paper, 8 pages

https://zhaohanphd.com/publications/aihri19-towards-a-robot-explanation-system-a-survey-and-our-approach-to-state-summarization-storage-and-querying-and-human-interface/

Zhao Han and Holly A. Yanco

The Effects of Proactive Release Behaviors During Human-Robot Handovers

28% acceptance rate

https://zhaohanphd.com/publications/hri19-the-effects-of-proactive-release-behaviors-during-human-robot-handovers/

Zhao Han

Investigating Human-Robot Handover Release Behaviors

Poster

https://zhaohanphd.com/publications/nems18-investigating-human-robot-handover-release-behaviors/

Zhao Han

Delivering Scalable Frequent Pattern Mining for Non-Expert Data Miners

https://zhaohanphd.com/publications/ms-thesis-delivering-scalable-frequent-pattern-mining-for-non-expert-data-miners/

Zhao Han and Carson K. Leung

FIMaaS: Scalable Frequent Itemset Mining-as-a-Service on Cloud for Non-Expert Miners

https://zhaohanphd.com/publications/bigdas15-fimaas-scalable-frequent-itemset-mining-as-a-service-cloud-non-expert-miners/

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

Edge-based mining of frequent subgraphs from graph streams

https://zhaohanphd.com/publications/kes15-edge-based-mining-frequent-subgraphs-graph-streams/