Our Research

Fostering Human-Robot Rapport

We explore how robots can exhibit social skills, like building rapport, that can facilitate positive long-term human-robot interactions.

Robots as Social Agents

We examine how factors such as robot personality, customizability, and autonomy can influence human-robot interactions.

Interaction-Shaping Robotics


We study how robots can shape human-to-human interactions in groups to improve group outcomes such as trust and inclusion.

Recent News

Apr 4, 2025

HRI Lab Participation at Museum of Science and Industry Robot Block Party

UChicago's HRI lab participated in the Museum of Science and Industry's annual Robot Block Party this past weekend, where we were able to showcase our robots and talk about human-robot interaction research with the Chicago community. It was fantastic to participate in such a fantastic event with other amazing roboticists in the Chicago area!

2025 MSI Robot Block Party

Mar 6, 2025

Mar 6, 2025

Four Papers to be Presented at HRI 2025

Our group has four papers accepted to the ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human Robot Interaction (HRI 2025) and we will present our work on March 6th (the final day of the conference):

For those attending HRI 2025, we encourage you to attend these talks!