HIDEKI GARCIA GOO

PhD Student at the University of Twente

In 2019, I successfully earned my B.S. in Electrical Engineering with a Minor in Computer Science at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. During the final years of my degree program, I had the opportunity to join my University's Social Systems laboratory, where I was captivated by how people interact with technology. After spending less than two years in the lab, I realized my passion for exploring the intricacies of human-robot interactions. This led me to pursue a M.A. in Experimental Psychology, where I could delve deeper into the fascinating world of creating and researching robot interactions. Currently, I am happy to be a Ph.D. student at the University of Twente and part of the European project Harmony. Our project is focused on developing a mobile robot to assist healthcare workers in their daily tasks. As a researcher in this project, my main objective is to minimize the negative impact of social errors made by robots in hospital settings. To achieve this, I am designing and customizing the robot's voice (using semantic-free utterances), gestures, micromovements, and color and shape to cater to people's diverse expectations and create a positive and comfortable user experience. Overall, I am passionate about my research and committed to contributing to developing technology that can positively impact society.

I am also interested in researching and discussing social bias, its consequences, and its manifestation across traditional forms of interaction (e.g., face-to-face) and technology-based interaction modalities that have emerged. Especially in the transfer to and reproduction of bias in people's interactions with agentic technologies (e.g., robots) and the capacity of such systems to address, deflect, and/or mitigate them.

Hobbies: Building and modding mechanical keyboards, playing with my cat (Canelita), photography, hiking, films, and music.