Doctoral Candidate
Tsukada Laboratory · Department of Creative Informatics
The University of Tokyo · Tier IV
Designing interactions for autonomous vehicles, robots, and the smart cities they move through — so people and machines share space better.
About
I'm an HCI researcher working on how people interact with autonomous vehicles, robots, and VR. My doctoral work is the Smart Pole Interaction Unit (SPIU) — an eHMI that moves intent signaling from the car to the curb, in time for pedestrians to act. M.S. from The University of Tokyo; B.Tech across Vel Tech University (India) and Nanyang Technological University (Singapore).
Part-time at Tier IV, I contribute to Autoware — the open-source self-driving stack behind both my experiments and real road vehicles. Full CV →
Now — more updates coming soon.
Research agenda
How should people interact with autonomous vehicles, robots, and the smart infrastructure that connects them? My work spans four scales — from a single pedestrian's perception to the cultures and cities that shape it.
Person
What helps a pedestrian feel safe to cross when there's no driver to read? Trust, decision time, and behaviour under uncertainty — measured with care across modalities.
→ Methods: VR experiments · in-the-wild field studies · VLM-persona synthetic participants
Vehicle & robot
How do autonomous vehicles and mobile robots make their intent legible — through external HMI on the vehicle, in-cabin HMI for passengers, and the way they actually move through space?
→ Platforms: Autoware · AWSIM · ROS 2 · Tier IV (industry)
Infrastructure
The doctoral contribution: an eHMI that lives in the curb, not the car — speaking for multiple AVs at once, visible in time for pedestrians to act, and connected to the city through 5G, V2X, and LiDAR.
→ CHI 2026 🏆 · IJHCS 2025 · VRST 2025 · WF-IoT 2023
Society & culture
The same eHMI in a different country meets a different pedestrian. Design has to work across street cultures, not just the one it was built in. Where HCI meets policy and shared-space ethics.
→ A Silent Negotiator? · VRST 2025 · Japan × Norway · N=40
Vantage point — Trained across India and Singapore, doctoral research in Japan, visiting at NTNU Norway. Cross-cultural by background, not just by method.
Selected publications
ACM CHI 2026 · Barcelona, Spain
In-the-wild evaluation (N=21) of a mobile SPIU with cameras and LED displays. Four-factor analysis shows clear gains in understandability, trust, and perceived safety; strongest when SPIU and vehicle eHMI work together.
ACM CHI 2026 · Barcelona, Spain
Parallel field study with 20 humans vs. 20 VLM personas on street-crossing decisions. Maps where VLM personas can scaffold embodied HCI studies — and where they fall short.
ACM VRST 2025 · Montréal, Canada
Parallel VR study (N=40 across Japan and Norway, 32 trials each) across four high-risk scenarios. SPIU reduces pedestrian decision time by 40–80% depending on scenario and cultural context.
International Journal of Human–Computer Studies, 2025
Group design study (N=25 humans) compared against three multimodal LLMs as experts. 90% of participants preferred SPIU-mediated multi-AV interaction; LLMs used safety-related keywords 30% more frequently than humans.
Recent
Talks & conferences
Teaching & mentoring
Curating events and promotional videos for IST School's Creative Evolution Project; designing activities as a volunteer to foster inclusivity; running research-talk sessions among students.
Team lead for an interdisciplinary student team competing on a mobility business challenge.
Contact