Our goal in the AABL lab is to make robots more helpful. Using insights from focus groups, user studies, and participatory research, we design new algorithms for human-robot interaction (HRI) and evaluate them in the real-life situations where robots could be most useful.

We work at the intersection of assistive technology and social robotics (including socially assistive robotics): we are especially interested in robots interacting with users under-served by typical HRI research, such as children, older adults, and people with disabilities. Ultimately, our work gives robots the intelligence to understand what people want, make good decisions about how to help, and to help appropriately in real-world interactions.