Fostering Human-Robot Rapport
We explore how robots can exhibit social skills, like building rapport, that can facilitate positive long-term human-robot interactions.
Our Research
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
July 24, 2025
Our Work Exploring Neurotic Robot Personalities was Featured on NPR
NPR published a piece Neurotic robots can be more relatable than extroverted bots, study finds discussing the findings of our recent HRI 2025 paper exploring robot personality traits and the particular potential of neurotic personality traits for robots. You can read the full paper here (authors: Alex Wuqi Zhang, Clark Kovacs, Liberto de Pablo, Justin Zhang, Maggie Bai, Sooyeon Jeong, Sarah Sebo).
May 16, 2025
Our Work on User Perceptions of the Social Agency of Customizable Robots was Featured in UChicago CS News
Our work investigating user how users perceive robots as social agents when they have the ability to control and customize their behavior was featured in UChicago CS News — here's a link to the article. This work was published at HRI 2025 and received a best paper honorable mention award. You can read the full paper here (authors: Alex Wuqi Zhang, Rafael Queiroz, and Sarah Sebo).
May 8, 2025
Visit from Jodi Forlizzi
We hosted a visit from Jodi Forlizzi, Herbert A. Simon Professor in Computer Science and the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. Jodi's visit included a talk on "The Role of Design in Purposeful and Pragmatic AI" as well as discussions with our lab members about our ongoing projects. We are grateful for her time and insights!
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! During the event, our lab members and robots were also featured on local Chicago TV station Fox 32.
