Liufei Xu
Papers
2
Total Citations
18
H-Index
2
About
Liufei Xu investigates the cognitive and communicative foundations of human-robot interaction, with a particular focus on spatial language and perspective-taking. Their research asks a fundamental question: do people intuitively treat robots as social partners, or as mere tools? In their most-cited work, “Do People Regard Robots as Human-Like Social Partners? Evidence From Perspective-Taking in Spatial Descriptions” (2021, 16 citations), Xu demonstrated that speakers spontaneously adopt the perspective of a robot addressee when giving spatial instructions—a hallmark of human-like social reasoning. This finding challenges the assumption that robots are perceived as objects, revealing a deep-seated tendency to anthropomorphize even in minimal interaction contexts. Xu extended this line of inquiry in “Treat robots as humans? Perspective choice in human-human and human-robot spatial language interaction” (2023, 2 citations), which reconciled inconsistent prior findings by showing that perspective-taking for robots depends on task complexity and spatial layout. By bridging cognitive science, linguistics, and robotics, Xu’s work provides critical insights for designing robots that can engage in natural, human-like spatial communication—a key requirement for collaborative robots in homes, workplaces, and public spaces.
Research Focus
Key Achievements
Top Papers
- 1
- 2