Frank Broz

About

Frank Broz is a pioneering researcher at the intersection of human-robot interaction (HRI), social robotics, and artificial intelligence, whose work has fundamentally shaped how robots understand, plan for, and engage with human behavior. His research spans probabilistic decision-making frameworks, multimodal interfaces, and the social dynamics of human-robot relationships, earning him over 400 citations across a distinguished body of work. Broz's early contributions established rigorous computational foundations for socially aware robots, most notably through his application of Partially Observable Markov Decision Processes (POMDPs) to model human intentions and enable context-sensitive robot behavior in dynamic environments. This theoretical groundwork directly informed his landmark involvement in the EU Robot-Era project, where he helped develop multimodal interfaces tailored for elderly users — work that garnered 109 citations and demonstrated the real-world viability of assistive robotic care. Beyond engineering, Broz has brought a deeply humanistic lens to his research, investigating mutual gaze and personality in human conversation through dual eye-tracking methods (96 citations) and championing equity, diversity, and reproducibility within the HRI community. His contributions to the ITALK developmental robotics project further reflect his commitment to interdisciplinary inquiry, bridging cognitive science, linguistics, and robotics to illuminate how both humans and machines learn and communicate.

Research Focus

Key Achievements

Top Papers

1. 1
   The multi-modal interface of Robot-Era multi-robot services tailored for the elderly

   109 citations · 2017
2. 2
   Mutual gaze, personality, and familiarity: Dual eye-tracking during conversation

   96 citations · 2012
3. 3
   Reproducibility in Human-Robot Interaction: Furthering the Science of HRI

   50 citations · 2022
4. 4
   Planning for Human–Robot Interaction in Socially Situated Tasks

   38 citations · 2013
5. 5
   Planning for human-robot interaction using time-state aggregated POMDPs

   33 citations · 2008
6. 6
   A web based Multi-Modal Interface for elderly users of the Robot-Era multi-robot services

   31 citations · 2014
7. 7
   The ITALK Project: A Developmental Robotics Approach to the Study of Individual, Social, and Linguistic Learning

   25 citations · 2014
8. 8
   Designing POMDP models of socially situated tasks

   22 citations · 2011
9. 9
   Interaction and experience in enactive intelligence and humanoid robotics

   18 citations · 2013
10. 10
    Inclusive HRI: Equity and Diversity in Design, Application, Methods, and Community

    17 citations · 2022

Key Collaborators

Contact & Links