Robots in Real Life: Putting HRI to Work

This talk will be focused on the unique challenges in deploying a mobile manipulation robot into an environment where the robot is working closely with people on a daily basis. Diligent Robotics' first product, Moxi, is a mobile manipulation service robot that is at work in hospitals today assisting nurses and other front line staff with materials management tasks. This talk will dive into the computational complexity of developing a mobile manipulator with social intelligence. Dr. Thomaz will focus on how human-robot interaction theories and algorithms translate into the real-world and the impact on functionality and perception of robots that perform delivery tasks in a busy human environment. The talk will include many examples and data from the field, with commentary and discussion around both the expected and unexpected hard problems in building robots operating 24/7 as reliable teammates. BIO: Andrea Thomaz is the CEO and Co-Founder of Diligent Robotics. Her accolades include being recognized by the National Academy of Science as a Kavli Fellow, the US President's Council of Advisors on Science and Tech (PCAST), MIT Technology Review TR35 list, and TEDx as a featured keynote speaker on social robotics. Dr. Thomaz has received numerous research grants including the NSF CAREER award and the Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award. Andrea has published in the areas of Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, and Human-Robot Interaction. Her research aims to computationally model mechanisms of human social learning and interaction, in order to build social robots and other machines that are intuitive for everyday people to teach. She earned her Ph.D. from MIT and B.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from UT Austin, and was a Robotics Professor at UT Austin and Georgia Tech (where she directed the Socially Intelligent Machines Lab). Andrea co-founded Diligent Robotics in 2018, to pursue her vision of creating socially intelligent robot assistants that collaborate with humans by doing their chores so humans can have more time for the work they care most about.