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Handovers are basic yet sophisticated motor tasks performed seamlessly by humans. They are among the most common activities in our daily lives and social environments. This makes mastering the art of handovers critical for a social and…

Although robots with flexible bodies are superior in terms of the contact and adaptability, it is difficult to control them precisely. On the other hand, human beings make use of the surrounding environments to stabilize their bodies and…

Assistive robotic systems have shown growing potential to improve the quality of life of those with disabilities. As researchers explore the automation of various caregiving tasks, considerations for how the technology can still preserve…

Humans often assume that robots are rational. We believe robots take optimal actions given their objective; hence, when we are uncertain about what the robot's objective is, we interpret the robot's actions as optimal with respect to our…

As robots enter the messy human world so the vital matter of safety takes on a fresh complexion with physical contact becoming inevitable and even desirable. We report on an artistic-exploration of how dancers, working as part of a…

People deeply care about how fairly they are treated by robots. The established paradigm for probing fairness in Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) involves measuring the perception of the fairness of a robot at the conclusion of an interaction.…

This study explores how human perceptions of a non-anthropomorphic robotic manipulator are shaped by two key dimensions of behaviour: arousal, defined as the robot's movement energy and expressiveness, and attention, defined as the robot's…

Robots that interact with humans in a physical space or application need to think about the person's posture, which typically comes from visual sensors like cameras and infra-red. Artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms use…

This paper presents three feedback controllers that achieve an asymptotically stable, periodic, and fast walking gait for a 3D (spatial) bipedal robot consisting of a torso, two legs, and passive (unactuated) point feet. The contact between…

From serving a cup of coffee to positioning mechanical parts during assembly, stable object placement is a crucial skill for future robots. It becomes particularly challenging under geometric uncertainties, e.g., when the object pose or…

There is a growing need for social robots and intelligent agents that can effectively interact with and support users. For the interactions to be seamless, the agents need to analyse social scenes and behavioural cues from their (robot's)…

Ergonomics and human comfort are essential concerns in physical human-robot interaction. Common practical methods in the area either fail in estimating the correct posture due to occlusion or suffer from inaccurate ergonomics models in…

This paper proposes a robot action planning scheme that provides an efficient and probabilistically safe plan for a robot interacting with an unconcerned human -- someone who is either unaware of the robot's presence or unwilling to engage…

In this context, a major focus of this thesis is on unintentional collisions, where a straight goal is to eliminate injury from users and passerby's via realtime sensing and control systems. A less obvious focus is to combine collision…

Human-robot object handovers have been an actively studied area of robotics over the past decade; however, very few techniques and systems have addressed the challenge of handing over diverse objects with arbitrary appearance, size, shape,…

When humans interact with robots influence is inevitable. Consider an autonomous car driving near a human: the speed and steering of the autonomous car will affect how the human drives. Prior works have developed frameworks that enable…

Recently, there has been a growing interest in rescue robots due to their vital role in addressing emergency scenarios and providing crucial support in challenging or hazardous situations where human intervention is difficult. However, very…

In intelligent manufacturing, robots are asked to dynamically adapt their behaviours without reducing productivity. Human teaching, where an operator physically interacts with the robot to demonstrate a new task, is a promising strategy to…

Humans are constantly influenced by others' behavior and opinions. Of importance, social influence among humans is shaped by reciprocity: we follow more the advice of someone who has been taking into consideration our opinions. In the…

This paper considers a scenario where a robot and a human operator share the same workspace, and the robot is able to both carry out autonomous tasks and physically interact with the human in order to achieve common goals. In this context,…