activity
20232026
most citedNo More Mumbles: Enhancing Robot Intelligibility through Speech Adaptation

8 citations · 31 across the 19 of their papers we have counts for

collaborators

19 papers

cs.RO2026

Multimodal Large Language Models for Real-Time Situated Reasoning

Giulio Antonio Abbo, Senne Lenaerts, Tony Belpaeme

In this work, we explore how multimodal large language models can support real-time context- and value-aware decision-making. To do so, we combine the GPT-4o language model with a…

cs.CL2025

Prompt-Based Value Steering of Large Language Models

Giulio Antonio Abbo, Tony Belpaeme

Large language models are increasingly used in applications where alignment with human values is critical. While model fine-tuning is often employed to ensure safe responses, this…

cs.RO2025

If They Disagree, Will You Conform? Exploring the Role of Robots' Value Awareness in a Decision-Making Task

Giulia Pusceddu, Giulio Antonio Abbo, Francesco Rea +2

This study investigates whether the opinions of robotic agents can influence human decision-making when robots display value awareness (i.e., the capability of understanding human…

cs.RO2025

Designing Robots with, not for: A Co-Design Framework for Empowering Interactions in Forensic Psychiatry

Qiaoqiao Ren, Remko Proesmans, Arend Pissens +7

Forensic mental health care involves the treatment of individuals with severe mental disorders who have committed violent offences. These settings are often characterized by high l…

cs.RO2025

Touch Speaks, Sound Feels: A Multimodal Approach to Affective and Social Touch from Robots to Humans

Qiaoqiao Ren, Tony Belpaeme

Affective tactile interaction constitutes a fundamental component of human communication. In natural human-human encounters, touch is seldom experienced in isolation; rather, it is…

cs.HC2025

Exploring LLM-generated Culture-specific Affective Human-Robot Tactile Interaction

Qiaoqiao Ren, Tony Belpaeme

As large language models (LLMs) become increasingly integrated into robotic systems, their potential to generate socially and culturally appropriate affective touch remains largely…

cs.RO2025★ 1 cited

Why Robots Are Bad at Detecting Their Mistakes: Limitations of Miscommunication Detection in Human-Robot Dialogue

Ruben Janssens, Jens De Bock, Sofie Labat +3

Detecting miscommunication in human-robot interaction is a critical function for maintaining user engagement and trust. While humans effortlessly detect communication errors in con…

cs.RO2025

Situated Haptic Interaction: Exploring the Role of Context in Affective Perception of Robotic Touch

Qiaoqiao Ren, Tony Belpaeme

Affective interaction is not merely about recognizing emotions; it is an embodied, situated process shaped by context and co-created through interaction. In affective computing, th…

cs.HC2025

Fast Multi-Party Open-Ended Conversation with a Social Robot

Giulio Antonio Abbo, Maria Jose Pinto-Bernal, Martijn Catrycke +1

Multi-party open-ended conversation remains a major challenge in human-robot interaction, particularly when robots must recognise speakers, allocate turns, and respond coherently u…

cs.RO2025

Touched by ChatGPT: Using an LLM to Drive Affective Tactile Interaction

Qiaoqiao Ren, Tony Belpaeme

Touch is a fundamental aspect of emotion-rich communication, playing a vital role in human interaction and offering significant potential in human-robot interaction. Previous resea…

cs.HC2025★ 6 cited

"Can you be my mum?": Manipulating Social Robots in the Large Language Models Era

Giulio Antonio Abbo, Gloria Desideri, Tony Belpaeme +1

Recent advancements in robots powered by large language models have enhanced their conversational abilities, enabling interactions closely resembling human dialogue. However, these…

cs.HC2025★ 2 cited

Vision Language Models as Values Detectors

Giulio Antonio Abbo, Tony Belpaeme

Large Language Models integrating textual and visual inputs have introduced new possibilities for interpreting complex data. Despite their remarkable ability to generate coherent a…

cs.RO2025★ 2 cited

Concerns and Values in Human-Robot Interactions: A Focus on Social Robotics

Giulio Antonio Abbo, Tony Belpaeme, Micol Spitale

Robots, as AI with physical instantiation, inhabit our social and physical world, where their actions have both social and physical consequences, posing challenges for researchers…

cs.RO2024

Touch and Tell: Multimodal Decoding of Human Emotions and Social Gestures for Robots

Qiaoqiao Ren, Remko Proesmans, Yuanbo Hou +2

Human emotions are complex and can be conveyed through nuanced touch gestures. Previous research has primarily focused on how humans recognize emotions through touch or on identify…

cs.RO2024

Tactile interaction with social robots influences attitudes and behaviour

Qiaoqiao Ren, Tony Belpaeme

Tactile interaction plays an essential role in human-to-human interaction. People gain comfort and support from tactile interactions with others and touch is an important predictor…

eess.AS2024★ 4 cited

Soundscape Captioning using Sound Affective Quality Network and Large Language Model

Yuanbo Hou, Qiaoqiao Ren, Andrew Mitchell +4

We live in a rich and varied acoustic world, which is experienced by individuals or communities as a soundscape. Computational auditory scene analysis, disentangling acoustic scene…

cs.RO2024★ 8 cited

No More Mumbles: Enhancing Robot Intelligibility through Speech Adaptation

Qiaoqiao Ren, Yuanbo Hou, Dick Botteldooren +1

Spoken language interaction is at the heart of interpersonal communication, and people flexibly adapt their speech to different individuals and environments. It is surprising that…

cs.CL2024★ 1 cited

Child Speech Recognition in Human-Robot Interaction: Problem Solved?

Ruben Janssens, Eva Verhelst, Giulio Antonio Abbo +3

Automated Speech Recognition shows superhuman performance for adult English speech on a range of benchmarks, but disappoints when fed children's speech. This has long sat in the wa…

cs.RO2023★ 7 cited

I Was Blind but Now I See: Implementing Vision-Enabled Dialogue in Social Robots

Giulio Antonio Abbo, Tony Belpaeme

In the rapidly evolving landscape of human-computer interaction, the integration of vision capabilities into conversational agents stands as a crucial advancement. This paper prese…