Lab News
Bart Paulhamus successfully defended his D.Eng thesis!
Congratulations! Bart will continue his career at JHU/APL Intelligent Systems Center.
April 2021
2020 end of year party
We look forward to 2021 and hope that we all can celebrate in person soon!
January 2021
Frank Bu received CRA Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher Honorable Mention
Fanjun (Frnak) Bu joined the 2021 CRA outstanding undergraduate researcher cohort and received an honorable mention. News announcement; Congratulations Frank!
January 2021
Master's students to join HRI/Robotics research labs
Four Master's students are joining leading HRI/Robotics research labs across the Nation: Xingli Han (WPI, Robotics); Jindan Huang (Tufts, CS); Brandon Tran (USC, CS); Yeping Wang (UW–Madison, CS). Congratulations everyone!
July 2020
Support for and progress on social navigation research
Our work on intent aware robot navigation has recently led to a conference paper (ICRA'20) and a seed fund from the JHU Institute for Assured Autonomy. We are excited to continue this line of work to investigate how to seamlessly integrate mobile robotic assistance into human environments.
March 2020
Research featured on the JHU Magazine
Our research on designing social robots for healthcare is recently featured on the JHU Magazine. We see great potential of social robots in providing social, emotional support to children and older adults in various healthcare settings. We look forward to continuing to make impact in this space.
December 2019
Papers to appear at HRI'20
We have a full paper and a late-breaking report accepted to HRI’20.
Full paper -- “See What I See: Enabling User-Centric Robotic Assistance Using First-Person Demonstrations” is
led by Yeping Wang and Gopika Ajaykumar, and describes a new way of robot programming by first-person demonstrations and its effects on human-robot collaboration.
Late-breaking report -- "User Needs and Design Opportunities in End-User Robot Programming" by Gopika Ajaykumar describes limitations in a state-of-the-art robot programming interface and their implications for new interface design.
December 2019
Extended abstracts accepted to Do Good Robotics Symposium
Our lab has three extended abstracts accepted to Do Good Robotics Symposium. We are looking forward to sharing our research and engaging with colleagues at the University of Maryland, College Park.
July 2019
Ji Han to join TuSimple
As one of the first few students in the lab, Ji helped build key infrastructure, both hardware and software, for the lab (Thank you!). His research project was focused on natural multimodal instruction of collaborative robots. He is soon joining TuSimple to work on autonomous future technology. All the best, Ji!
July 2019
Amrita Krishnaraj to join Van Robotics
Amrita's Master's research was broadly on designing social robots for mental health care and particularly focused on haptics-based affective communication. She is joining Van Robotics to work on social robots for personalized education. All the best, Amrita!
June 2019
Gopika Ajaykumar spoke to girl scouts at the Maryland Science Center
Gopika presented our research on Human-Robot Interaction and our recent work on making robot programming more accessible for users to girl scouts at the Maryland Science Center. It was great to engage young learners interested in robotics and interactive technologies!
June 2019
Equipment Award: Quori Robot
Our team, in collaboration with Greg Hager and John Krakauer, will receive a Quori robot to investigate how a mobile social robot may be used to support healthy aging.
APL Contract: Human-Robot Co-Navigation
We recently started a collaboration project with APL to investigate Human-Robot Co-Navigation. We will share our results soon!
Paper to appear at IUI’19
Our paper entitled “PATI: A Projection-based Augmented Table-Top Interface for Robot Programming” is accepted to publish at IUI’19. This paper, led by Yuxiang Gao, describes a novel interface for intuitive end-user robot programming. The paper is now available here.
Dr. Chien-Ming Huang is named the John C. Malone Assistant Professor
Lab director Dr. Chien-Ming Huang is named the John C. Malone Assistant Professor. This professorship is generously supported by Dr. John C. Malone to advance the frontiers of engineering in healthcare. Congratulations!
Gopika Ajaykumar received research fellowship recognition
Gopika Ajaykumar received the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship (2018–2021) and the Howard and Jacqueline Chertkof Endowed Fellowship (2018–2019)! Congratulations!
NSF Award: Human-Machine Teaming for Medical Decision Making
We received an NSF award to study human-machine cognitive teaming for medical decision making. This project is a collaboration with Suchi Saria (PI), Martin Makary, William Padula, and David Newman-Toker. Here is the news announcement.
Article to appear on ACM Transactions on Interactive Intelligent Systems
Our work on “Toward Effective Robot-Child Tutoring: Intrinsic Motivation, Behavioral Intervention, and Learning Outcomes” will soon be available in ACM Transactions on Interactive Intelligent Systems.
Science Robotics
Our recent work on “improving social skills in children with ASD using a long-term, in-home social robot” is now on Science Robotics! This work demonstrates the potential of social robots on autism research.
Paper accepted to HRI’18
Our recent work on robot-child tutoring was accepted to HRI’18. This work explores how a tutoring robot can provide meta-cognitive support, particularly thinking aloud during problem solving, to children and how such support may shape learning outcomes.