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

Currently, I investigate how robots can infer and respond to human intentions by leveraging large language models (LLMs) and vision–language models (VLMs), informed by insights from psychology to enable socially appropriate behavior in human–robot interaction.

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.

Learn More

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

Selected Publications

More publications can be found on my Google Scholar.

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 ACM

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

Academic Service

Conference Workshop Organiser

Multi-Agentic Systems in HRI (MAgicS-HRI): Bridging Design and Real-World Challenges for End Users, HRI’26

Conference Reviewer

HRI (2025, 2026); CHI (2023); DIS (2025, 2026); IDC (2025, 2026); INTERACT (2025); WHC (2025); RO-MAN (2024); HAI (2024); HRI LBR (2026)

Journal Reviewer

IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L); Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies (IMWUT)

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