I am a postdoctoral researcher in the Human-Robot Interaction Lab at Kyoto University, where I collaborate with Prof. Takayuki Kanda. My work focuses on human–robot interaction and embodied AI, with particular emphasis on developing expressive manipulation strategies that enhance the transparency, legibility, and naturalness of robot behavior in human-shared environments.

News

2026-02: Started my postdoctoral research at Kyoto University!
2025-12: Successfully defended my PhD viva.
2025-12: One paper is accepted by HRI 2026.
2024-12: One paper is accepted by HRI 2025.

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2023-11: One paper is accepted by HRI 2024.
2022-04: Excited to begin my PhD journey at Kyoto University!

Publications

Communicating Object Relations through Robot Gestures

Xiang Pan *, Malcolm Doering, and Takayuki Kanda

ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK, 2026

Note: CORE A*, Top-tier HRI venue, 23.2% acceptance rate (129/557)

Paper

Communicating Physical Properties through Robot Object Manipulation

Xiang Pan *, Malcolm Doering, Stela H. Seo, and Takayuki Kanda

ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, Melbourne, Australia, 2025

Note: CORE A*, Top-tier HRI venue, 25% acceptance rate (100/400)

Paper ACM IEEE

What Is Your Other Hand Doing, Robot? A Model of Behavior for Shopkeeper Robot's Idle Hand

Xiang Pan *, Malcolm Doering, and Takayuki Kanda

ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, Colorado, USA, 2024

Note: CORE A*, Top-tier HRI venue, 24.7% acceptance rate (87/352)

Paper ACM IEEE

Efficient Barcode Localization Method for Low-Quality Images

Xiang Pan, Dong Li, Weijia Wu, and Hong Zhou *

International Conference on Graphics and Signal Processing, Hong Kong, China, 2019

Paper ACM

Teaching Experience

Teaching Assistant, Information System Analysis, 2025, Kyoto University

Academic Service

Conference Workshop Organisor
- 2026 Multi-Agentic Systems in HRI (MAgicS-HRI): Bridging Design and Real-World Challenges for End Users, HRI’26
Conference Review
- ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), 2023
- ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), 2025, 2026
- ACM Conference on Designing Interactive Systems (DIS), 2025, 2026
- ACM Interaction Design and Children Conference (IDC), 2025, 2026
- IFIP TC13 International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (INTERACT), 2025
- IEEE World Haptics Conference (WHC), 2025
- IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN), 2024
- International Conference on Human-Agent Interaction (HAI), 2024
Journal Review
- IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L), 2026
- Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies (IMWUT), 2026
- Electronics Letters, 2020
Student Volunteer
- IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2022

Selected Awards

Excellent Postgraduate Student Award, Zhejiang University, 2020
Outstanding Graduate Leader Award, Zhejiang University, 2018
Outstanding Graduate Student Award, Anhui Province, 2017
Youth May Fourth Medal, Anhui University of Technology, 2017 (Highest Undergraduate Honor, 10 Awardees University-wide)

Education

Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan
Ph.D. in Social Informatics (Apr 2022 – Jan 2026)
Advisor: Prof. Takayuki Kanda
Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China
M.S. in Instrument and Meter Engineering (Sept 2017 – Jun 2020)
Advisor: Prof. Hong Zhou
Anhui University of Technology, Ma’anshan, China
B.S. in Electronic and Information Engineering (Sept 2013 – Jul 2017)
Advisor: Prof. Bing Wang

Xiang Pan