Research

I study how people and robots communicate, from the gestures we see to the objects we have in mind. I’m currently an undergraduate researcher in UNC’s IRON Lab.

Publications

HRI 2026 Peer-reviewed

RECS: LSTM-Based Cognitive Status Estimation for Human-Robot Interaction

A model that combines language and gestures to help robots estimate which objects a person is thinking about or aware of.

Higger, M., Wang, Z., Rygina, P., Ferreira Bezerra, L., Daigler, L., Aloia, Z., Wu, S., Pandey, I., Chen, A., Williams, T. (2026). Proceedings of the 21st ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction.

View citation
@inproceedings{higger2026recs,
  author = {Higger, Mark and Wang, Zhuoyi and Rygina, Polina and Ferreira Bezerra, Lara and Daigler, Logan and Aloia, Zane and Wu, Sheena and Pandey, Ishani and Chen, Amanda and Williams, Tom},
  title = {{RECS}: {LSTM}-Based Cognitive Status Estimation for Human-Robot Interaction},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the 21st ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction},
  year = {2026},
  pages = {590--597},
  doi = {10.1145/3757279.3785597}
}
Diagram of the RECS cognitive status estimation pipeline from the HRI 2026 paper
RECS pipeline, figure 1. Higger et al., 2026. CC BY 4.0.

IROS 2025 Peer-reviewed

That’s Iconic! Designing Augmented Reality Iconic Gestures To Enhance Multi-modal Communication For Morphologically Limited Robots

A study of augmented reality gestures that help robots communicate about objects beyond a person’s view, even without physical arms.

Zhu, Y., Torres, A., Aloia, Z., Williams, T. (2025). Proceedings of the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems.

View citation
@inproceedings{zhu2025iconic,
  author = {Zhu, Yifei and Torres, Alexander and Aloia, Zane and Williams, Tom},
  title = {That’s Iconic! Designing Augmented Reality Iconic Gestures To Enhance Multi-modal Communication For Morphologically Limited Robots},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems},
  year = {2025},
  doi = {10.1109/IROS60139.2025.11246567}
}
A Furhat robot beside a virtual pointing hand and colored blocks in the augmented reality gesture study
Augmented reality gesture study. Detail of figure 1, Zhu et al., 2025.

Across these studies at Colorado School of Mines, I recruited participants, ran trials, programmed Nao interactions, and assisted with analysis in JASP.

Research experience

Fall 2026 - present

IRON Lab

Undergraduate Researcher, UNC Chapel Hill

I contribute to human-robot interaction research in the Interactive Robotics and Novel Technologies Laboratory.

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Summers 2023 & 2024

MIRRORLab

Research Assistant, Colorado School of Mines

Recruited participants and ran human-robot interaction trials. Programmed Nao robot interactions, assisted with analysis in JASP, and contributed to two co-authored papers.

Visit the lab

Other research

AI integration across Fortune 1000 companies

Independent white paper, pending review

An independent white paper on the ethical implications of AI integration for employees and consumers.