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
Dec 1, 2025
Four Papers Accepted to HRI 2026!
Our group has three papers accepted to the ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human Robot Interaction (HRI 2026) and we will present our work at the conference in Eidenburgh, Scotland March 16-29, 2026:
- Fictional vs. Factual Robot Tutor Dialogue Can Shape Child Social-Emotional Learning by Lauren L. Wright, Kaitlyn Li, Hewitt Watkins, Kiljoong Kim, and Sarah Sebo
- Can You Help Me? The Influence of Robot Requests for Help on Child-Robot Connection by Teresa Flanagan, Justin Chenjia Zhang, Lin Bian, and Sarah Sebo
- Customizing Robot Personality: How Personality Control and Form Factor Shape Perceptions of a Robot as a Social Agent by Alex Wuqi Zhang, Aaron Huang, Allison J. Li, and Sarah Sebo
Oct 27, 2025
UChicago HRI Lab Featured on UChicago's Inside the Lab
The work of our lab has recently been featured on UChicago's Inside the Lab series! Check out the video below and the corresponding news article to learn more about our lab's mission and research areas, as well as some of the exciting projects we are working on.
Oct 11, 2025
Our Work Exploring how Robots can Shape Human-Human Connections in Decision-Making Tasks Published in Computers in Human Behavior
Work in our lab led by Timmy Lin explores the influence of a robot's positive or negative feedback on the interpersonal connectios between people in shared decision-making tasks. Published in Computers in Human Behavior (link to the article here), this work shows that both the human-likeness of a robot and its feedback distribution can impact human interpersonal closeness in decision-making contexts.
Sep 10, 2025
Our Work Showing Robots are Less Anxious Reading Aloud to Robots Published in Science Robotics
Work in our lab led by Lauren Wright demonstrated that children experience less anxiety when reading aloud to a robot as opposed to a human adult. Published in Science Robotics (link to the article here) demonstrates a unique advantage that robots can have in educational settings, creating safe spaces for children to make mistakes while learning without fearing judgment. This work has already been featured in UChicago News and UChicago CS News.
