Papers
32
Total Citations
683
H-Index
14
About
Abolfazl Zaraki is a pioneering researcher at the intersection of social robotics, human-robot interaction, and assistive technology, whose work has profoundly shaped how humanoid robots can support children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Best known for his sustained contributions to the development of Kaspar — a humanoid robot designed specifically to assist children with autism — Zaraki has amassed over 495 citations across his most influential works, demonstrating the field-wide resonance of his research. His 2019 paper on developing Kaspar alone has garnered 148 citations, reflecting the landmark significance of this assistive platform. Zaraki's technical contributions span the design of context-aware social gaze-control systems, social perception architectures for human-robot interaction, and reinforcement learning-based control for robotic manipulators. His interdisciplinary approach bridges cognitive science and robotics engineering, enabling robots to engage meaningfully with human social cues. Particularly notable is his longitudinal work on Visual Perspective Taking and Theory of Mind, demonstrating empirically that robot-mediated intervention can genuinely improve critical social cognition skills in autistic children. Through iterative design, rigorous experimental evaluation, and deep clinical collaboration, Zaraki has helped transform assistive robotics from a promising concept into a therapeutically validated reality.
Research Focus
Key Achievements
Top Papers
- 1Developing Kaspar: A Humanoid Robot for Children with Autism148 citations · 2019
- 2Designing and Evaluating a Social Gaze-Control System for a Humanoid Robot97 citations · 2014
- 3Actor–critic learning based PID control for robotic manipulators44 citations · 2023
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- 8Towards a Believable Social Robot25 citations · 2013
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