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Human-robot teaming offers great potential because of the opportunities to combine strengths of heterogeneous agents. However, one of the critical challenges in realizing an effective human-robot team is efficient information exchange -…
Social robots, also known as service or assistant robots, have been developed to improve the quality of human life in recent years. Socially assistive robots (SAR) are a special type of social robots that focus on providing support through…
The need for customizable properties in autonomous robotic platforms, such as in-home nursing care for the elderly and parallel implementations of human-to-machine control interfaces creates an opportunity to introduce methods deploying…
Humans are highly skilled in communicating their intent for when and where a handover would occur. However, even the state-of-the-art robotic implementations for handovers typically lack of such communication skills. This study investigates…
For people affected by blindness and low vision (BLV), safe and independent navigation remains a major challenge, impacting over 2.2 billion individuals worldwide. Although multimodal large language models (MLLMs) offer new opportunities…
We have a vision of a day when autonomous robots can collaborate with humans as assistants in performing complex tasks in the physical world. This vision includes that the robots will have the ability to communicate with their human…
Mobile service robots have become increasingly ubiquitous. However, these robots can pose potential accessibility issues and safety concerns to people with visual impairments (PVI). We sought to explore the challenges faced by PVI around…
Robotic telepresence enables users to navigate and experience remote environments. However, effective navigation and situational awareness depend on users' prior knowledge of the environment, limiting the usefulness of these systems for…
We are developing a system for human-robot communication that enables people to communicate with robots in a natural way and is focused on solving problems in a shared space. Our strategy for developing this system is fundamentally…
People are proficient at communicating their intentions in order to avoid conflicts when navigating in narrow, crowded environments. In many situations mobile robots lack both the ability to interpret human intentions and the ability to…
Quadruped robots are currently a widespread platform for robotics research, thanks to powerful Reinforcement Learning controllers and the availability of cheap and robust commercial platforms. However, to broaden the adoption of the…
With the ever-growing expansion of mobile technology worldwide, there is an increasing need for accommodation for those who are disabled. This project explores how machine learning and computer vision could be utilized to improve…
Interactive streetscape mapping tools such as Google Street View (GSV) and Meta Mapillary enable users to virtually navigate and experience real-world environments via immersive 360{\deg} imagery but remain fundamentally inaccessible to…
Finding obstacle-free paths in unknown environments is a big navigation issue for visually impaired people and autonomous robots. Previous works focus on obstacle avoidance, however they do not have a general view of the environment they…
To help the blind people walk to the destination efficiently and safely in indoor environment, a novel wearable navigation device is presented in this paper. The locating, way-finding, route following and obstacle avoiding modules are the…
Hand-drawn maps can be used to convey navigation instructions between humans and robots in a natural and efficient manner. However, these maps can often contain inaccuracies such as scale distortions and missing landmarks which present…
As autonomous service robots become more affordable and thus available also for the general public, there is a growing need for user friendly interfaces to control the robotic system. Currently available control modalities typically expect…
Assistive robots have attracted significant attention due to their potential to enhance the quality of life for vulnerable individuals like the elderly. The convergence of computer vision, large language models, and robotics has introduced…
Navigational signs are common aids for human wayfinding and scene understanding, but are underutilized by robots. We argue that they benefit robot navigation and scene understanding, by directly encoding privileged information on actions,…
Outdoor navigation on sidewalks in urban environments is the key technology behind important human assistive applications, such as last-mile delivery or neighborhood patrol. This paper aims to develop a quadruped robot that follows a route…