Me

I'm Jan, a Ph.D. student at the LMU Munich since May 2022 in the Human-Centered Ubiquitous Media group under the supervision of Sven Mayer and Albrecht Schmidt. My research addresses the question of how to enable effective communication and understanding between humans and robots. My current primary focus is on how to create curiosity for robots and how curious users perceive robots. Furthermore, I am investigating how to effectively create human-understandable gestures for robots to communicate their current intents.

Before, I did my bachelor's and master's in Computer Science at the University of Stuttgart and graduated in 2021, where I put a strong focus on Human-Computer-Interaction, Deep Learning, and Visualization. I also worked as a student research assistant at the Visualization Research Center Stuttgart.

Publications

2025

The Future of Human-Robot Synergy in Interactive Environments: The Role of Robots at the Workplace

Jan Leusmann, Pooja Prajod, Alex Binh Vinh Duc Nguyen, Max Pascher, Andrew Vande Moere, Sven Mayer

Adjunct Proceedings of the 4th Annual Symposium on Human-Computer Interaction for Work, Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 2025, ISBN: 9798400713972.

A Vision for Room-scale AI Interaction

Carl Oechsner, Jan Leusmann, Xuedong Zhang, Thomas Weber, Sven Mayer

Workshop on BEst Practices and Guidelines for Human-Centric Design and EvAluation of ProactiVE AI Agents, CEUR Workshop Proceedings

Influence of Perceived Danger on Proxemics in Human-Robot Object Handovers

Carl Oechsner, Jan Leusmann, Andreas Butz, Sven Mayer

Proceedings of Mensch und Computer 2025, Association for Computing Machinery, Chemnitz, Germany

Developing and Validating the Perceived System Curiosity Scale (PSC): Measuring Users' Perceived Curiosity of Systems

Jan Leusmann, Steeven Villa, Burak Berberoglu, Chao Wang, Sven Mayer

Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ´25).

An Approach to Elicit Human-Understandable Robot Expressions to Support Human-Robot Interaction

Jan Leusmann, Steeven Villa, Thomas Liang, Chao Wang, Albrecht Schmidt, Sven Mayer

Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ´25).

Investigating LLM-Driven Curiosity in Human-Robot Interaction

Jan Leusmann, Anna Belardinelli, Luke Haliburton, Stephan Hasler, Albrecht Schmidt, Sven Mayer, Michael Gienger, Chao Wang

Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ´25).

Investigating Preferred Human-Robot Handover Timings Based on Predictive Deep Learning

Jan Leusmann, Ludwig Felder, Chao Wang, Sven Mayer

2025 20th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, IEEE/ACM, 2025

Eliciting Understandable Architectonic Gestures for Robotic Furniture through Co-Design Improvisation

Alex Binh Vinh Duc Nguyen, Jan Leusmann, Sven Mayer, Andrew Vande Moere

2025 20th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, IEEE/ACM, 2025.

2024

Privacy Communication Patterns for Domestic Robots

Maximiliane Windl, Jan Leusmann, Albrecht Schmidt, Sebastian S Feger, Sven Mayer

SOUPS '24

Comparing Rule-based and LLM-based Methods to Enable Active Robot Assistant Conversations

Jan Leusmann, Chao Wang, Sven Mayer

Proceedings of the CUI@CHI 2024: Building Trust in CUIs - From Design to Deployment

Uncovering labeler bias in machine learning annotation tasks

Luke Haliburton, Jan Leusmann, Robin Welsch, Sinksar Ghebremedhin, Petros Isaakidis, Albrecht Schmidt, Sven Mayer

AI and Ethics 2024

2023

A Database for Kitchen Objects: Investigating Danger Perception in the Context of Human-Robot Interaction

Jan Leusmann, Carl Oechsner, Johanna Prinz, Robin Welsch, Sven Mayer

Extended Abstracts of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Association for Computing

Understanding the Uncertainty Loop of Human-Robot Interaction

Jan Leusmann, Chao Wang, Michael Gienger, Albrecht Schmidt, Sven Mayer

Proceedings of the Socially Assistive Robots as Decision Makers: Transparency, Motivations, and Intentions Workshop, 2023.

Investigating Opportunities for Active Smart Assistants to Initiate Interactions With Users

Jan Leusmann, Jannik Wiese, Moritz Ziarko, Sven Mayer

International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Multimedia (MUM '23)

2022

Predicting Next Actions and Latent Intents during Text Formatting

Guanhua Zhang, Susanne Hindennach, Jan Leusmann, Felix Bühler, Benedict Steuerlein, Sven Mayer, Mihai Bâce, Andreas Bulling

Proceedings of the CHI Workshop Computational Approaches for Understanding, Generating, and Adapting User Interfaces, pp. 1–6, 2022.

2019

Knuckle Touch: Enabling Knuckle Gestures on Capacitive Touchscreens using Deep Learning

Robin Schweigert, Jan Leusmann, Simon Hagenmayer, Maximilian Weiß, Huy Viet Le, Sven Mayer, Andreas Bulling

Proceedings of Mensch und Computer 2019

Understanding Visual-Haptic Integration of Avatar Hands Using a Fitts' Law Task in Virtual Reality

Valentin Schwind, Jan Leusmann, Niels Henze

Proceedings of Mensch und Computer 2019

Teaching

SS 2025

Practical Course Development of Media Systems: Human-Robot Interaction

Lecturer

Lecture Artificial Intelligence in Interactive Systems

Assistant

WS 2024/2025

Practical Course Human-Robot Interaction

Lecturer

Introduction into Programming with Minor Subject Media Informatics

Lecturer

SS 2024

Hauptseminar Medieninformatik

Supervisor

Conversational Artificial Intelligence

Assistant

WS 2023/2024

Practical Course Development of Media Systems: Human-Robot Interaction

Lecturer

Introduction into Programming with Minor Subject Media Informatics

Lecturer

SS 2023

Hauptseminar Medieninformatik

Supervisor

Practical Machine Learning

Assistant

Computer Graphics 1

Assistant

WS 2022/2023

Proseminar Media Informatics

Supervisor

Practical Course Development of Media Systems: Human-Robot Interaction

Lecturer

Introduction into Programming with Minor Subject Media Informatics

Lecturer

Advised Theses

Developing a Platform for Rapidly Prototyping Facial Expressions for Humanoid Robots

2025, Bachelor's Thesis, Maximilian Kriebel

Leveraging Large-Language Models to Enable Social Cues for Non-Huamnoid Robots

2024, Bachelor's Thesis, Gaman Thach

Curious Robot Controls: An Integrated System for Real-Time Robotic Interaction and Simulation

2024, Practical, Noel Huibers

Investigating Opportune Moments for Robot Disruptions

2024, Bachelor's Thesis, Simone Tuyisabe

Designing and Evaluating Face Designs to Support Human-Robot Communication

2024, Bachelor's Thesis, Katharina Manicke

A Multistage Human-In-The-Loop Action-Recognition Approach using Deep Learning for Human-Robot Interaction

2024, Master's Thesis, Terence Stenvold

Assessing Curiosity in Physical Interactive Systems: A System Curiosity Questionnaire

2024, Master's Thesis, Burak Berberoglu

Indoor Scene Understanding and Representation in a 3D World with Computer Vision

2024, Master's Thesis, Barbara Seidinger

Comparison of Empirical Methods to Evaluate Human-Robot Interactions Approaches

2024, Master's Thesis, Tuan Khang Huynh

Development of an Agricultural Processes Planning Software for Autonomous Machines

2023, Master's Thesis, Niklas Esch

Designing a User-Friendly and Secure Emergency Communication System

2023, Master's Thesis, Andreas Stelzer

Understanding the Impact of Domestic Collaborative Robot Actions on User Comfort

2023, Master's Thesis, Johanna Prinz

Deep-Learning Approaches for Unsupervised Action Boundary Detection

2023, Master's Thesis, Simon Maihöfner

Investigating Active Robot-Human Dialogs for Knowledge Sourcing

2023, Master's Thesis, Dominik Fuchs

Solutions Journalism Meets News Feeds: Investigating the Effects on Psychological Wellbeing of Readers by Matching Digital News With Solution-Oriented Content

2023, Master's Thesis, Christopher Voit

Investigating Optimal Human-Robot Handover Timings Based on Predictive Deep Learning

2023, Master's Thesis, Ludwig Felder

Dataset Generation and Evaluation for Human-Robot Interaction

2023, Bachelor's Thesis, Jasmin Aylin Thio