For a full, updated list of publications, visit my Google Scholar. A few representative journal articles and conference papers are listed below:

Selected Journal Articles

Year Authors Title Journal Web
2026 Kappan, M. M., Sandoval, E. B., Meijering, E., & Cruz, F. A survey on deep learning for 2D and 3D human pose estimation. Artificial Intelligence Review, 59(1), 32.
2025 Harland, H., Dazeley, R., Senaratne, H., Vamplew, P., Cruz, F., & Nakisa, B. AI apology: a critical review of apology in AI systems. Artificial Intelligence Review, 58(12), 369.
2025 Hashemi, M., Darejeh, A., & Cruz, F. Understanding user preferences in explainable artificial intelligence: A mapping function proposal. ACM Transactions on Intelligent Systems and Technology, 16(4), 1-37.
2024 Ayala, A., Portela, L., Buarque, F., Fernandes, B. J., & Cruz, F. UAV control in autonomous object-goal navigation: a systematic literature review. Artificial Intelligence Review, 57(5), 125.
2024 Bamdad, M., Karimi, A., Sina, S., & Cruz, F. Modeling and dynamic analysis of fish robot with soft fluidic actuation. Journal of Intelligent & Robotic Systems, 111(1), 2.
2024 Ly, A., Dazeley, R., Vamplew, P., Cruz, F., & Aryal, S. Elastic step DQN: A novel multi-step algorithm to alleviate overestimation in Deep Q-Networks. Neurocomputing, 576, 127170.
2023 Cruz, F., Dazeley, R., Vamplew, P., & Moreira, I. Explainable robotic systems: Understanding goal-driven actions in a reinforcement learning scenario. Neural Computing and Applications, 35(25), 18113-18130.
2023 Millán-Arias, C., Fernandes, B., & Cruz, F. Proxemic behavior in navigation tasks using reinforcement learning. Neural Computing and Applications, 35(23), 16723-16738.
2023 Bignold, A., Cruz, F., Taylor, M. E., Brys, T., Dazeley, R., Vamplew, P., & Foale, C. A conceptual framework for externally-influenced agents: An assisted reinforcement learning review. Journal of Ambient Intelligence and Humanized Computing, 14(4), 3621-3644.
2021 Dazeley, R., Vamplew, P., Foale, C., Young, C., Aryal, S., & Cruz, F. Levels of explainable artificial intelligence for human-aligned conversational explanations. Artificial Intelligence, 299, 103525.
2018 Cruz, F., Magg, S., Nagai, Y., & Wermter, S. Improving interactive reinforcement learning: What makes a good teacher?. Connection Science, 30(3), 306-325.
2016 Cruz, F., Magg, S., Weber, C., & Wermter, S. Training Agents with Interactive Reinforcement Learning and Contextual Affordances IEEE Transactions on Cognitive and Developmental Systems, 8(4), 271-284.

Selected Conference Papers

Year Authors Title Conference Web
2025 Mesto, M., & Cruz, F. The Consensus Paradox: When Low Disagreement Leads to Catastrophic Failure in Multi-teacher Reinforcement Learning. Best paper award Proceedings of the Australasian Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AJCAI), pp. 426-438, Canberra, Australia.
2025 Afrisal, H., Abpeikar, S., & Cruz, F. Depth-Aware Audio Visual Segmentation with Geometry-Heuristic Cross Attention. Proceedings of the Australasian Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AJCAI), pp. 187-199, Canberra, Australia.
2025 Meng, Z., Althubyani, M., Xie, S., Razzak, I., Sandoval, E. B., Bamdad, M., & Cruz, F. PERCY: Personal emotional robotic conversational system. Proceedings of the Australasian Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AJCAI), pp. 466-478, Canberra, Australia.
2025 Zhao, H., Kappan, M. M., Bamdad, M., & Cruz, F. LAPX: Lightweight Hourglass Network with Global Context. Proceedings of the Australasian Conference on Robotics and Automation (ACRA), Perth, Australia.
2025 Oltan Sevinc, M., Wu, L., & Cruz, F. Towards Closing the Domain Gap with Event Cameras. Proceedings of the Australasian Conference on Robotics and Automation (ACRA), Perth, Australia.
2025 Ji, S., Bamdad, M., & Cruz, F. SWIFT-Nav: Stability-Aware Waypoint-Level TD3 with Fuzzy Arbitration for UAV Navigation in Cluttered Environments. Proceedings of the Australasian Conference on Robotics and Automation (ACRA), Perth, Australia.
2024 Lee, C., Sandoval, E. B., & Cruz, F. Human Decision-Making Concepts with Goal-Oriented Reasoning for Explainable Deep Reinforcement Learning. Proceedings of the Australasian Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AJCAI), pp. 228-240, Melbourne, Australia.
2024 Chen, Y., Schomaker, L., & Cruz, F. Boosting Reinforcement Learning Algorithms in Continuous Robotic Reaching Tasks Using Adaptive Potential Functions. Proceedings of the Australasian Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AJCAI), pp. 52-64, Melbourne, Australia.
2024 Althobaiti, A., Ayala, A., Gao, J., Almutairi, A., Deghat, M., Razzak, I., & Cruz, F. How can LLMs and knowledge graphs contribute to robot safety? A few-shot learning approach. Proceedings of the Australasian Conference on Robotics and Automation (ACRA), Auckland, New Zealand.
2022 Cruz, F., Young, C., Dazeley, R., & Vamplew, P. Evaluating human-like explanations for robot actions in reinforcement learning scenarios. Proceedings of the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), pp. 894-901, Kyoto, Japan.
2020 Ayala, A., Cruz, F., Campos, D., Rubio, R., Fernandes, B., & Dazeley, R. A comparison of humanoid robot simulators: A quantitative approach. Most popular presentation award Proceedings of the Joint IEEE International Conference on Development and Learning and Epigenetic Robotics (ICDL-EpiRob), pp. 1-6, Valparaiso, Chile.
2018 Cruz, F., Parisi, G. I., & Wermter, S. Multi-modal feedback for affordance-driven interactive reinforcement learning. Proceedings of the IEEE International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN), pp. 1-8, Rio, Brazil.
2016 Cruz, F., Parisi, G. I., Twiefel, J., & Wermter, S. Multi-modal integration of dynamic audiovisual patterns for an interactive reinforcement learning scenario. Proceedings of the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), pp. 759-766, Daejeon, Korea.

Thesis

Francisco Cruz. "Teaching Robots with Interactive Reinforcement Learning". PhD Thesis, University of Hamburg, 2017.