Nils Hofemann
Papers
7
Total Citations
143
H-Index
6
About
Nils Hofemann is a pioneering researcher in human-robot interaction, with a focus on enabling intuitive, multimodal communication between robots and humans. His work centers on gesture recognition, object attention, and social learning for robot companions designed to operate in private homes with naive users. Hofemann’s most-cited paper, “A Multi-Modal Object Attention System for a Mobile Robot” (2005, 67 citations), introduced a system that allows robots to attend to objects through combined visual and gestural cues, a foundational contribution to natural human-robot collaboration. He further advanced the field with “Recognition of Deictic Gestures with Context” (2004, 25 citations) and “Interacting with a Mobile Robot: Evaluating Gestural Object References” (2008, 14 citations), which demonstrated how context-aware gesture recognition can make robot interactions more human-like. Hofemann also contributed to the design of robot companions through the BIRON project, a case study in social robotics. His work on manipulative gesture recognition and imitation learning—such as detecting “when to imitate” in social contexts—has influenced how robots learn from human caregivers. With over 140 cumulative citations, Hofemann’s research remains essential for students and engineers developing socially adept, household robots.
Research Focus
Key Achievements
Top Papers
- 1A multi-modal object attention system for a mobile robot67 citations · 2005
- 2Recognition of Deictic Gestures with Context25 citations · 2004
- 3Interacting with a mobile robot: Evaluating gestural object references14 citations · 2008
- 4Research Issues for Designing Robot Companions: BIRON as a Case Study14 citations · 2004
- 5Hierarchical Modeling and Recognition of Manipulative Gesture9 citations · 2005
- 6
- 7Detecting ‘When to Imitate’ in a Social Context with a Human Caregiver6 citations · 2005