Our Research

Robots that Enhance Human-to-Human Interactions

We explore how robots can enhance human-to-human interactions to improve collaborative team outcomes by promoting inclusion, trust, and cohesion.

Understanding Group Dynamics in the Context of HRI

We seek to build computational models that can detect important group dynamics to inform decision-making policies for robot actions.

Robots for Education


We are committed to making real world impact. We develop robots that provide personalized one-on-one tutoring help to students.

Recent News

Mar 18, 2024

Lab Meetings for Spring 2024

HRI lab meetings will be held during the 2024 Spring quarter on Tuesdays from 3:30pm - 4:30pm in JCL 354 starting Tuesday, March 19. If you’re a current UChicago student and interested in learning more about our research and/or how to get involved with our research, please feel free to join our weekly lab meetings. Feel free to email sarahsebo@uchicago.edu if you have any questions.

Mar 14, 2024

Mar 12-14, 2024

Presentations & Participation at HRI 2024

Stephanie Kim, Spenger Ng, Jacy Anthis, and Sarah Sebo attended the ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human Robot Interaction (HRI 2024) in Boulder Colorado. Stephanie and Spencer both presented their papers:

HRI 2024 group picture

Feb 10, 2024

New THRI Publication: RoSI A Model for Predicting Robot Social Influence

PI Sarah Sebo is a joint author of the paper RoSI A Model for Predicting Robot Social Influence that was just accepted for publication at THRI. This paper proposes a new conceptual model that predicts the level of social influence a robot has in a human-robot interaction based on two factors: violation of expectation and a person's social belonging with the robot. To learn more, please read the paper:

Feb 6, 2024

Interaction-Shaping Robotics Paper Published in THRI

PI Sarah Sebo is a member of a collaborative team that has just published a paper in the THRI journal defining the sub-field of HRI called Interaction-Shaping Robotics (ISR). ISR investigates robots that influence the behaviors and attitudes exchanged between two (or more) other agents. To learn more, please read the paper: