Projects

Our projects explore the intersection of robotics, creativity, and human connection across diverse domains, from health to the arts.

Active

AURA: Authenticity Markets in Artist Robot Interaction

Abhishek Narula, Angshu Adhya, Cindy Yang, David Ho, Emily Wu, Hana Ichikawa, Longzhen Yuan, Mrunmayee "MJ" Jere, Rishad Hasan, Tianxin (Jessica) Li

2024 - ongoing | DARPA Young Faculty Award

This project explores how robotic generative systems can be used to define an authentic creative process. Questions this project answers are: Can we trace authenticity during the production of a painting? When an artist creates a collaborative painting can the robot recognize authenticity markers and try to match them? Ultimately, can we create “labels of authenticity” that will support the copyright of real artists vs. art generated by genAI systems?

DELICIOUS: Assistive Robotics for People with Disabilities during Social Dining

Atharva Kashyap

2024 - ongoing

Social Dining, or eating within a group, is a universal meaningful experience that brings people together. This project leverages foundational models to develop an assistive feeding system that can more efficiently understand the user and address their individual needs. By promoting independent eating, people with physical disabilities can take a seat in professional dinners that can advance their career, and feel comfortable accepting invitations to eat with a group of friends to strengthen social connections.

DROODLES: Design and Developmental of GenAI to Propel Human Creativity

Trey Davis, Erfun Ackley, Peter H. Kahn Jr.,

2024 - ongoing

This project aims to investigate if interacting with a creative collaborative assistant powered by foundational models can lead to the generation of creative droodle captions. Towards this, we will compare the droodle captions generated during the interaction with the creative collaborative assistant to the generated captions created as a result of a conversation with a human creative mentor. We will also explore the role of embodiment (computer and robot) in this setting to propel human creativity.

FUTURES: Visioning Design Evolution for Human-Robot Interaction

Aleena Qaiser, Guan-Ling Chen, Anastasia Ostrowski

2024 - ongoing | NSF EAGER

This project focuses on integrating design research-based visioning methodologies to provide a strategic vision towards the future of Design for Human-Robot Interaction (HRI). We aim to achieve the following overarching goals: to conceptualize what Design for HRI is; to scope the design methodologies, tools, and procedures necessary to create interactive robots; and to define evaluation strategies for design work conducted within the HRI field. The outcome will be a roadmap for the field of Design for HRI that spams 50 years.

GUARDIAN: Social Robot Mental Health Program for Youth who have been in Juvenile Detention

Connor Williams, Leia Stirling

2024 - ongoing

This project aims to build an understanding of that interactions that youth who have been in juvenile detention have with robotic systems to inform the design and preliminary evaluation of a social robot to support mental health. We will build a new social robot to deliver mental health training and conduct community-based participatory research by including in the research team a community member with a similar experience and demographics as our target population. We expect robot interactions to facilitate youth’s-entry in society.

RELATE: Key-Moments in Long-Term Relationship with Social Robots

Jiali Zhen

2024 - ongoing

This project aims to conduct social media ethnography to study how current customers of Astro live with the device. We propose to answer the following questions: what do customers wish Astro could do beyond its current abilities? when living with Astro becomes a routine, how does their relationship shift? what are the special moments in a relationship with Astro? The outcome of this project is a framework with design tenets that promote lifelong robotic agency and companionship between families and Astro.

TOUCH: Assistive Robot Touch during Medical Emergencies

Grace Pan, Gurnoor Kaur

2024 - ongoing

The role of touch in humans has proven to be an important part of our development. In this project, we aim to design a comfortable, safe, and intuitive touch interaction from the robot to the human during assistive scenarios. We aim to study what types of communication styles, embodiment factors, and touch parameters are best suited for an assistive robot that delivers care during medical and assistive needs.

VISTA: Robot Character for Fun Medical Eye Exams

Jeffrey Qiu, Ilkyaz Sarimehmetoglu, Mark Draelos, Nita Valikodath

2024 - ongoing

This project aims to contribute to new design directions towards robots that can socially engage with children while imaging their eyes reliably. Eye imaging in pediatric patients is essential to diagnose and manage ocular diseases, but it is practically impossible to conduct due to their fear and aversion during the exam. In this project, we explore the design space of character design for a robot OCT system to make eye exams more fun for children.

Completed

EMAR: Ecological Momentary Assessment Robot

Elin Björling, Maya Cakmak

2017- 2022 | NSF

This project aims to design and develop an engaging social robot to capture real-time stress and mood data from teens, and to successfully deploy and evaluate the social robot in an urban, high school setting. As school populations increase, and mental health services decrease, gathering valid, real-time data via engaging technology may be an essential tool for assessing student health. Using a human-centered design approach, the project employs participatory methods to engage local teens directly in the design and testing of the robot.

METAPHORS: Collection of Metaphors for Human-Robot Interaction

Maria Luce Lupetti, Michal Luria, Diana Löffler

2021

This project explores the use of metaphors for generating novel ideas, reframing existing problems, and eliciting new perspectives of human-robot interaction. Through metaphors, this project proposes new ways of using, relating to, and co-existing with the robots. By identifying assumptions, we provide a comprehensible list of aspects to reconsider regarding robots’ physicality, roles, and behaviors. Through metaphors, we propose new ways of examining how we can use, relate to, and co-exist with the robots that will share our future.

YOLO: Robot for Creative Empowerment

Ana Paiva, Patricia Arriaga, Guy Hoffman

2015 - 2020 | FCT

This project seeks to design, fabricate, and evaluate robots as creativity-provoking tools. By creating a social robot named YOLO (or Your Own Living Object) that promotes creativity during unstructured play, this project showed how creating a story with this robot evokes divergent and convergent thinking processes in children, leading to more original storylines.

CUBUS: Digital Storytelling Tool for Creativity

André Pires, Carlos Martinho, Ana Paiva

2017 - 2021

This project created a digital tool that inspires social creativity in children during storytelling. While creating a story using Cubus, children build on each others’ ideas, engaging in collective storytelling processes that have the potential to increase innovation, team play, and problem-solving.

AMIGOS: Affect Modeling for Robots In Group Social Interactions

Filipa Correia, Raquel Oliveira, Sofia Petisca, Patricia Arriaga, Ana Paiva

2016 - 2019 | FCT

AMIGOS (means 'Friends' in Portuguese) is a project investigating the role of collaboration and competition in interactions between robots and humans. We explored how robots can promote positive group dynamics through board game scenarios. Contrasting to the typical one-robot one-user paradigm in human-robot interaction, we studied the role of emotions and adaptation in interactions between a robot and a group of users.

COWRITER: Robots for Children’s Handwriting

INESC-ID (Portugal) and EPFL (Switzerland)

2015 - 2018

This project explores how a robot can help children acquire handwriting, where children are the teachers who help the robot to write better. This paradigm, known as “learning by teaching”, has the powerful effect of boosting their self-esteem. It engages them in a so-called “Protégé effect”: because they unconsciously feel that they are somehow responsible if the robot does not succeed in improving its writing skills, they developing their metacognitive skills and reflecting on their errors.

MODULAND: Playground Kit for Learning Electronic Music

Avner Peled, Caleb Owusu-Yianoma, Fabian Schöfer, Jiří Zemánek, Klementyna Jankiewicz, Monica Vlad, Saskia Freeke, Soyeon Hwang, Yaprak Göker

2019 | MIT Media Lab Berlin

MODULAND is a project that creates an embodied and interactive music lesson in an urban space by turning playgrounds into music using our open-source materials. With MODULAND, playgrounds become modular synthesizers to raise curiosity, exploration, and connection to electronic music. MODULAND was created in 1-week during MIT Media Lab Berlin Workshop.

EMOTE: Embodied-Perceptive Tutors for Empathy-Based Learning

INESC-ID (Portugal), Herriot-Watt University (UK), Goetebordgs University (Sweden), University of Bremen (Germany), University of Sunderland (UK)

2012 - 2016

This European FP7 project set the challenge to create empathic robotic tutors by researching how robots can respond to learners. An empathic robot can adapt to the learning pace of children, supporting their process and at the same time challenging new curricula. Can an autonomous robot designed with empathic competencies foster collaborative learning in a group context? Can an empathic robot sustain positive educational outcomes in long-term collaborative learning interactions with groups of students?