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About

Yurii Vasylkiv is a researcher specializing in social robotics, human-robot interaction, and affective computing, with a particular focus on expressive robotic behavior and collaborative storytelling. Working extensively with Honda Research Institute's tabletop robot Haru, Vasylkiv has made significant contributions to how robots can engage meaningfully with humans through emotion, narrative, and empathy. Among his most impactful contributions is his pioneering work on collaborative storytelling with social robots, where he helped expand the field beyond curated content toward fully automatic, interactive story generation — work that has accumulated nearly 50 citations across related publications. His research into affective telepresence has advanced the way robots can convey human emotions remotely, developing systems that interpret facial expressions, body gestures, and spatial information to trigger empathic responses. His work on human-in-the-loop reinforcement learning offers a more naturalistic approach to training robots' emotional behaviors, moving beyond rigid keyboard-based feedback to intuitive human guidance. Vasylkiv's broader body of work demonstrates a consistent drive to make robots feel more alive, expressive, and socially capable. With over 85 citations across his published research, his contributions are shaping the future of emotionally intelligent robots that can genuinely collaborate and connect with the humans around them.