Organizers

Chief Scientist, Honda Research Institute USA (HRI-US). Teruhisa Misu received his Ph.D. in Informatics from Kyoto University in 2008. He leads a research team on human-centered intelligence and multimodal human–machine interaction at HRI-US. His work spans dialogue systems, multimodal interfaces, and understanding human states.

Senior Scientist, Honda Research Institute USA (HRI-US). Zhaobo Zheng earned his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Vanderbilt University in 2021. His research interests include multimodal machine learning, human state and behavior recognition, and human–computer interaction. At HRI-US, he works on sensing human states in group contexts.

Assistant Professor, Kyoto University, Japan. Koji Inoue received his Ph.D. from Kyoto University in 2018 and is an expert in conversational AI and social robotics. His team developed advanced dialogue systems (e.g., the Android ERICA) that integrate multimodal backchannels. In 2023, he was a visiting researcher at KTH in Sweden. He has received international awards (e.g., NETEXPLO Innovation Award 2022) and brings expertise in human–robot interaction and group communication dynamics.

A researcher at Honda Research Institute Japan, where he works on multimodal human-robot interaction, with a focus on sensing, modeling, and understanding social dynamics in multi-party settings. His research interests include affective computing, conversational interfaces, and group behavior sensing, especially in contexts where AI systems are expected to coordinate with multiple human collaborators.