Katarzyna Wac
Papers
6
Total Citations
244
H-Index
4
About
Katarzyna Wac is a prominent researcher at the intersection of human-robot interaction, affective computing, and assistive technology, with a particular focus on designing socially and emotionally intelligent robotic systems. Her most influential work explores how humanoid robots can convey believable emotional expressions through multimodal cues — integrating voice, body language, and contextual signals — to enhance human acceptance and interaction quality. Her 2019 paper on multimodal emotional signal integration has garnered 180 citations, establishing her as a leading voice in emotion recognition within HRI contexts. Complementing this, her 2017 study on emotionally expressive robot design (40 citations) laid important groundwork for understanding how humans perceive affective cues from social agents. More recently, Wac has directed her expertise toward real-world applications through the GUARDIAN project, a multi-country ecosystem deploying social robots as companions to support elderly individuals and homecare nurses — addressing pressing challenges of aging populations, loneliness, and caregiver shortages. Her work spans rigorous empirical research and translational design, bridging laboratory insights with deployable healthcare solutions. Researchers and students interested in socially assistive robotics, elder care technology, or affective human-machine interaction will find her body of work both foundational and practically inspiring.
Research Focus
Key Achievements
Top Papers
- 1
- 2Designing Emotionally Expressive Robots40 citations · 2017
- 3
- 4
- 5GUARDIAN: An assisted living social robotics eco-system4 citations · 2022
- 6TransSG: A Spatial-Temporal Transformer for Surgical Gesture Recognition3 citations · 2025