Tariq Iqbal

About

Tariq Iqbal is a pioneering researcher at the intersection of human-robot interaction, machine learning, and collaborative robotics, whose work has significantly advanced the ability of robots to understand, anticipate, and respond to human behavior. Best known for his development of Multi-GAT, a graphical attention-based hierarchical multimodal framework for human activity recognition (90 citations), Iqbal has consistently tackled one of robotics' most persistent challenges: enabling robots to perceive and interpret complex human actions in real-world environments. His research spans scalable multi-agent motion prediction for seamless human-robot collaboration (47 citations), multimodal sensor fusion combining motion capture and wearable EMG data (40 citations), and coordination dynamics in multi-human, multi-robot teams (39 citations). Beyond technical contributions, Iqbal explores the social dimensions of robotics, examining how humor, personality, and trust shape human perceptions of robot partners, and applying social robotics to meaningful domains such as dementia caregiving and financial literacy education. His temporally adaptive teaming framework, TANDEM, further reflects his commitment to building robots that coordinate fluidly with human partners. Collectively, his work, with over 330 cumulative citations, charts a compelling vision of robots as genuinely responsive, socially intelligent collaborators capable of supporting diverse human communities.

Research Focus

Key Achievements

Top Papers

1. 1
   Multi-GAT: A Graphical Attention-Based Hierarchical Multimodal Representation Learning Approach for Human Activity Recognition

   90 citations · 2021
2. 2
   A Scalable Approach to Predict Multi-Agent Motion for Human-Robot Collaboration

   47 citations · 2021
3. 3
   Activity recognition in manufacturing: The roles of motion capture and sEMG+inertial wearables in detecting fine vs. gross motion

   40 citations · 2019
4. 4
   Coordination Dynamics in Multihuman Multirobot Teams

   39 citations · 2017
5. 5
   Who's Laughing NAO? Examining Perceptions of Failure in a Humorous Robot Partner

   26 citations · 2022
6. 6
   Joint action perception to enable fluent human-robot teamwork

   24 citations · 2015
7. 7
   Fast Online Segmentation of Activities from Partial Trajectories

   22 citations · 2019
8. 8
   Reimagining Robots for Dementia

   19 citations · 2023
9. 9
   Embodied AI for Financial Literacy Social Robots

   12 citations · 2023
10. 10
    Temporal Anticipation and Adaptation Methods for Fluent Human-Robot Teaming

    11 citations · 2021

Key Collaborators

Contact & Links