Me

I'm Jan, a doctoral researcher at LMU Munich in the Human-Centered Ubiquitous Media group, supervised by Sven Mayer and Albrecht Schmidt. I recently submitted my dissertation. My doctoral research was conducted in collaboration with Honda Research Europe. My research explores how humans and robots can communicate and understand one another. In particular, I study how robots can express curiosity, how people perceive curious robots, and how robots can communicate their intentions through understandable gestures. Before joining LMU, I completed my bachelor's and master's degrees in Computer Science at the University of Stuttgart, graduating in 2021.

Publications

2026

Intent-Aware Backchanneling for Active Listening in Human-Robot Interaction

Yang Sun, Jan Leusmann, Michael Hedderich

MuC '26: Proceedings of Mensch und Computer 2026

What Counts as Proactive? Rethinking Proactivity in Conversational Agents

Matthias Kraus, Sebastian Zepf, Jan Leusmann, Shiyao Zhang, Anastasia Kuzminykh, and Nima Zargham

8th ACM Conference on Conversational User Interfaces (CUI '26)

AIKitchen: A Rapid Prototyping Framework for Exploring In-context Behavior of Smart Robotic Environments

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

Proceedings of the Mensch Und Computer 2026, pp. 1–16, Association for Computing Machinery

RoboFaceMaker: Designing Understandable Facial Expressions to Communicate Robot Intentions

Jan Leusmann, Thomas Weber, Maximilian Kriebel, Chao Wang, Sven Mayer

35th IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication, pp. 1-8, IEEE, 2026.

How People Envision Robot Interruption Behaviors

Jan Leusmann, Maximiliane Windl, Michael Gienger, Chao Wang, Sven Mayer

35th IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication, pp. 1-8, IEEE, 2026.

Anticipation Without Acceleration: Benefits of Shared Gaze in Collocated Augmented Reality Collaboration

Julian Rasch, Vladislav Dmitrievic Rusakov, Jan Leusmann, Florian Müller, Albrecht Schmidt

Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

If It’s Safe, Don’t Ask: Decreasing Frustration through User Involvement for Risky Robot Behaviors

Jan Leusmann, Sarah Schömbs, Maximilian Diedrich, Florian Müller

Proceedings of the 21st ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI'26)

Context Is Cue-Cial: Assessing the Interpretation of Social Signals from Non-anthropomorphic Robots in Different Contexts

Aparajita Chowdhury, Ana Carrasco, Florian Müller, Aino Ahtinen, Kaisa Väänänen, Albrecht Schmidt, Jan Leusmann

International Conference on Social Robotics

2025

Designing Intent Communication for Agent-Human Collaboration

Yi Li, Francesco Chiossi, Helena Anna Frijns, Jan Leusmann, Julian Rasch, Robin Welsch, Philipp Wintersberger, Florian Michahelles, Albrecht Schmidt

MUM '25: Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Multimedia

How to Design Interactive Physical Learning Robots That Are Fun to Teach: If You Are Curious, I Will Show You!

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

IEEE Pervasive Computing, vol. 24, no. 2, pp. 34-38, April-June 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, Robin Welsch, 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).

Understanding Preferred Robot Reaction Times for Human-Robot Handovers Supported by a Deep Learning System

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 2026

Practical Course Development of Media Systems: Human-Robot Interaction

Lecturer

WS 2025/2026

Guest Lecture: Introduction to Human-Robot Interaction @ TU Dortmund IUI Course

Guest Lecturer

Guest Lecture: Introduction to Human-Robot Interaction @ LMU IUI Course

Guest Lecturer

Practical Course Development of Media Systems: Human-Robot Interaction

Lecturer

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

Beyond Speech: Modelling Intent-Driven Non-Verbal Responses for Human-Robot Interaction

2026, Master's Thesis, Yang Sun

Eliciting Understandable Nonverbal Expressions for Domestic Robots to Communicate Intentions

2026, Master's Thesis, Alexander Schlager

Enhancing action detection for robot curiosity through online learning

2026, Master's Thesis, Bogdan Hristinov Kyuchukov

Developing and Evaluating User Interfaces for Continuous Control of AI Image Generation Using Latent Space Navigation

2025, Master's Thesis, Ludwig Baader

Investigating Shared Gaze Visualizations in Collaborative Augmented Reality

2025, Master's Thesis, Vladislav Rusakov

Slow, Wrong, or Unsure: User Involvement as a Response to Robot Transparency and Error

2025, Bachelor's Thesis, Maximilian Diedrich

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