2009 is whizzing by and has been filled with yet more big transitions. In my research at Willow Garage, I've been translating as much as I can from my experiences in human-computer interaction to human-robot interaction, primarily working on non-verbal robot behaviors such as respecting personal spaces and being expressive, using lessons from animation techniques. My latest CSCW paper (based on one study from my dissertation) has been nominated for best paper and we will be publishing our latest HRI experiment on user expectations of personal robots at HRI 2010 in Osaka. In my personal life, I got married in October, honeymooned in Costa Rica (pictured) in December, and am now getting back to a much less hectic everyday life.

In the coming months, I'll be completely redoing this web space under my new domain name: http://www.leilatakayama.org. If you'd like to link to me from now on, please use this new name instead of my expired Stanford URL.