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About

Michael Gleicher is a prominent researcher whose work spans human-robot interaction, robot motion planning, gaze behavior in virtual agents, and teleoperation systems. His scholarship bridges the fields of computer graphics, social robotics, and human-computer interaction, with a particular focus on making robotic systems more intuitive, lifelike, and accessible. Gleicher has made substantial contributions to understanding and generating realistic gaze behaviors in virtual agents and humanoid robots. His widely cited reviews on eye and gaze animation (213 and 66 citations respectively) have become foundational references for researchers designing socially convincing artificial agents. His work on conversational gaze aversion (203 citations) demonstrated how robots can use subtle nonverbal cues to more naturally regulate human interaction. In robotics, Gleicher developed RelaxedIK (113 citations), an influential real-time inverse kinematics solver enabling smooth, collision-aware robot arm motion, and pioneered shared-control frameworks for bimanual robot manipulation (104 citations). His teleoperation research introduced innovative interfaces allowing novice users to intuitively control robot arms through natural hand movements (91 citations), alongside autonomous camera systems that dynamically improve operator viewpoints during remote tasks. Through tools like MotionBenchMaker (51 citations) and explorations of virtual reality for human-robot interaction, Gleicher continues shaping how researchers evaluate and design next-generation robotic systems.