Lauren Klein – Robohub https://robohub.org Connecting the robotics community to the world Mon, 05 Oct 2026 01:07:30 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=7.1.3 ep.324: Embodied Interactions: from Robotics to Dance, with Kim Baraka https://robohub.org/embodied-interactions-from-robotics-to-dance/ Wed, 02 Dec 2020 04:46:03 +0000 https://robohub.org/embodied-interactions-from-robotics-to-dance/

In this episode, our interviewer Lauren Klein speaks with Kim Baraka about his PhD research to enable robots to engage in social interactions, including interactions with children with Autism Spectrum Disorder. Baraka discusses how robots can plan their actions across multiple modalities when interacting with humans, and how models from psychology can inform this process. He also tells us about his passion for dance, and how dance may serve as a testbed for embodied intelligence within Human-Robot Interaction.

Kim Baraka

Kim Baraka is a postdoctoral researcher in the Socially Intelligent Machines Lab at the University of Texas at Austin, and an upcoming Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, where he will be part of the Social Artificial Intelligence Group. Baraka recently graduated with a dual PhD in Robotics from Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in Pittsburgh, USA, and the Instituto Superior Técnico (IST) in Lisbon, Portugal. At CMU, Baraka was part of the Robotics Institute and was advised by Prof. Manuela Veloso. At IST, he was part of the Group on AI for People and Society (GAIPS), and was advised by Prof. Francisco Melo.

Dr. Baraka’s research focuses on computational methods that inform artificial intelligence within Human-Robot Interaction. He develops approaches for knowledge transfer between humans and robots in order to support mutual and beneficial relationships between the robot and human. Specifically, he has conducted research in assistive interactions where the robot or human helps their partner to achieve a goal, and in teaching interactions. Baraka is also a contemporary dancer, with an interest in leveraging lessons from dance to inform advances in robotics, or vice versa.

PS. If you enjoy listening to experts in robotics and asking them questions, we recommend that you check out Talking Robotics. They have a virtual seminar on Dec 11 where they will be discussing how to conduct remote research for Human-Robot Interaction; something that is very relevant to researchers working from home due to COVID-19.

]]> ep.318: Humanized Intelligence in Academia and Industry, with Ayanna Howard https://robohub.org/humanized-intelligence-in-academia-and-industry/ Tue, 08 Sep 2020 17:59:44 +0000 https://robohub.org/humanized-intelligence-in-academia-and-industry/


In this episode, Lauren Klein interviews Ayanna Howard, Professor and Chair of the School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Tech. Professor Howard describes her wide range of work in robotics, from robots that assist children with special needs to trust in autonomous systems. She also discusses her path through the field of robotics in both academia and business, and the importance of conducting in-the-wild robotics research.


Ayanna Howard
Ayanna Howard is a Professor and Chair of the School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Tech. Professor Howard is the director and founder of the Human-Automation Systems (HumAnS) Laboratory. Her research focuses on humanized intelligence, with a wide range of applications from Human-Robot Interaction to science-driven robotics. Prior to Georgia Tech, she led research projects at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Professor Howard is also a founder and the CTO of the educational robotics company Zyrobotics.

Links

]]> ep.317: Environmental Monitoring with the SlothBot, with Gennaro Notomista https://robohub.org/environmental-monitoring-with-the-slothbot/ Tue, 25 Aug 2020 18:28:23 +0000 https://robohub.org/environmental-monitoring-with-the-slothbot/


In this episode, Lauren Klein interviews Gennaro Notimista, a robotics PhD student in the Georgia Robotics and InTelligent Systems Laboratory at Georgia Tech. Gennaro discusses the SlothBot, a solar-powered robot that slowly traverses wires, like its animal namesake, to monitor the environment.

Gennaro Notomista

Photo from news.gatech.edu

Gennaro Notomista is a robotics PhD student in the Georgia Robotics and InTelligent Systems Laboratory at Georgia Tech. Gennaro studies control frameworks, with the goal of making robots robust against a changing environment so they can handle long-duration deployments. Toward this goal, he explores constraints-driven control and approaches to coverage control, or enabling robots to traverse closed environments.  In addition to the SlothBot, Gennaro has applied his research to areas such as autonomous driving and swarm robotics.

Links

]]> ep.315: Exploring from a Distance, with Muralidharan Arikara https://robohub.org/exploring-from-a-distance/ Tue, 28 Jul 2020 05:44:57 +0000 https://robohub.org/exploring-from-a-distance/

In this episode, Lauren Klein interviews Muralidharan Arikara, CEO of Xarpie Labs. Xarpie Labs creates visualization and simulation experiences within the retail, healthcare, and defense industries. Arikara describes how Xarpie Labs grew as part of the Machani Group, which has decades of experience in automotive manufacturing, into an innovator in virtual and augmented reality. He elaborates on the role of Xarpie Lab’s virtual reality and augmented reality experiences in allowing real estate customers a vision of properties from a distance. Arikara also paints a picture of Xarpie Labs’ augmented reality tools, including a project for a museum to visualize old gramophones for visitors and an air conditioning troubleshooting tool for technicians.

Muralidharan Arikara

Muralidharan Arikara is an entrepreneur and the CEO of Xarpie Labs. Arikara is an engineer by training, and worked in the clean energy industry prior to his current role. In addition to his role as CEO at Xarpie Labs, he is also a member of the advisory board of several startups in the energy and consumer segments.

 

Links

]]> ep.303: Fostering Creativity: RSS Pioneers and the YOLO Robot, with Patrícia Alves-Oliveira https://robohub.org/fostering-creativity-rss-pioneers-and-the-yolo-robot/ Sun, 02 Feb 2020 00:18:26 +0000 https://robohub.org/fostering-creativity-rss-pioneers-and-the-yolo-robot/

In this episode, Lauren Klein interviews Human-Robot Interaction researcher Patrícia Alves-Oliveira. Alves-Oliveira tells us about the upcoming RSS Pioneers workshop at the 2020 Robotics: Science and Systems Conference; the workshop brings senior PhD students and postdoctoral researchers together to collaborate and discuss their work with distinguished members of the robotics field. She also describes her own research designing robots to encourage creativity in children.

Patrícia Alves-Oliveira

Patrícia Alves-Oliveira is an upcoming postdoctoral researcher working with Professor Maya Cakmak in the Human-Centered Robotics Lab at the University of Washington. She recently completed her PhD in Human-Robot Interaction at the Lisbon University Institute supervised by Profs. Ana Paiva and Patrícia Arriaga, also working as a visiting scholar in the Human-Robot Collaboration and Companionship Laboratory at Cornell University, supervised by Professor Guy Hoffman. Patrícia’s research focuses on the use of social robots as intervention tools to enrich creative behaviors in children. Patrícia’s overarching goal as a Human-Robot Interaction researcher is to investigate how and where robots can be used to empower innate human qualities and experiences.

Links

]]> ep.300: Past and Present Podcast Team Members, with Sabine Hauert, Peter Dürr and Andra Keay https://robohub.org/past-and-present-podcast-team-members/ Sun, 22 Dec 2019 18:39:14 +0000 https://robohub.org/past-and-present-podcast-team-members/

Welcome to the 300th episode of the Robohub podcast! You might not know that the podcast has been going in one form or another for 14 years. Originally called “Talking Robots,” the podcast was started in 2006 by Dario Floreano and several of his PhD students at EPFL, in Switzerland, including Sabine Hauert, Peter Dürr, and Markus Waibel, who are all still involved in Robohub today.  Since then, the podcast team has become international, with most of its interviewers in the United States and Europe, and all of its members being volunteers.

To celebrate 300 episodes of our podcast, we thought we would catch up with some of our former, as well as current, volunteers from around the world to find out why and how they got involved in the podcast, how their involvement impacted on their lives and careers, and what they’re doing in their day jobs now.

First up, Sabine Hauert, one of Professor Floreano’s former students, now, Assistant Professor in the Bristol Robotics Laboratory at the University of Bristol in the UK. Sabine, whose work focuses on swarm robotics, is also acting President and Co-founder of Robohub.org. She spoke to our interviewer Lilly.

Next, our interviewer and current podcast President Audrow caught up with Peter Dürr, who now leads a team in Switzerland focused on Computer Vision research, whilst remaining active with the podcast by editing all of our episodes.

And last, but definitely not least, Andra Keay, Managing Director of non-profit industry group Silicon Valley Robotics, and long standing member of Robohub, spoke to our interviewer Lauren about her company, and women in robotics.

Links

]]> ep.295: inVia Robotics: Product-Picking Robots for the Warehouse, with Rand Voorhies https://robohub.org/invia-robotics-product-picking-robots-for-the-warehouse/ Mon, 07 Oct 2019 04:33:59 +0000 https://robohub.org/invia-robotics-product-picking-robots-for-the-warehouse/

In this episode, Lauren Klein speaks with Dr. Rand Voorhies, co-founder and CTO of inVia Robotics. In a world where consumers expect fast home delivery of a variety of goods, inVia’s mission is to help warehouse workers package diverse sets of products quickly using a system of autonomous mobile robots. Voorhies describes how inVia’s robots operate to pick and deliver boxes or totes of products to and from people workers in a warehouse environment eliminating the need for people to walk throughout the warehouse, and how the actions of the robots are optimized.

Rand Voorhies

Rand Voorhies is the CTO and a founder of inVia Robotics, where he leads the engineering team in developing the software which drives their system of autonomous robots. Voorhies received his PhD in computer science from the University of Southern California, where he conducted robotics research with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Links

]]> ep.291: Medieval Automata and Cathartic Objects: Modern Robots Inspired by History, with Michal Luria https://robohub.org/medieval-automata-and-cathartic-objects-modern-robots-inspired-by-history/ Mon, 22 Jul 2019 00:51:57 +0000 https://robohub.org/medieval-automata-and-cathartic-objects-modern-robots-inspired-by-history/



In this episode, Lauren Klein interviews Michal Luria, a PhD candidate in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, about research that explores the boundaries of Human-Robot Interaction. Michal draws inspiration from the Medieval Times for her project to test how historical automata can inform modern robotics. She also discusses her work with cathartic objects to support emotional release.

Michal Luria

Michal Luria is a PhD candidate in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, advised by Professors Jodi Forlizzi and John Zimmerman. Michal’s research centers on exploring alternative ways for humans to interact with agents and social robots. Prior to her PhD, Michal studied Interactive Communication at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya in Israel.

Links

 

]]> ep.288: On Artificial Intelligence for Wildlife Conservation, with Milind Tambe https://robohub.org/on-artificial-intelligence-for-wildlife-conservation/ Tue, 11 Jun 2019 16:58:23 +0000 https://robohub.org/on-artificial-intelligence-for-wildlife-conservation/


In this episode, Lauren Klein interviews Professor Milind Tambe of Computer Science and Industrial and Systems Engineering at the University of Southern California about his research using artificial intelligence for wildlife conservation. Dr. Tambe describes his team’s use of security games to combat poaching, and his experience deploying his algorithms to inform park ranger schedules internationally.

Milind Tambe

Profile picture

viterbi.usc.edu

Dr. Milind Tambe is the Helen N. and Emmett H. Jones Professor in Engineering at the University of Southern California, and Professor in the Computer Science and Industrial and Systems Engineering Departments. He is a founding co-director of the CAIS Center for AI in Society, where he advises students and conducts research on multiagent teamwork, distributed constraint optimization, and security games. The security games framework developed by Dr. Tambe has been deployed and tested nationally and internationally, and led to his co-founding of company Avata Intelligence.

Links

 

 

]]> ep.285: On Storytelling Robots for Children, with Hae Won Park https://robohub.org/on-storytelling-robots-for-children/ Wed, 01 May 2019 17:08:42 +0000 https://robohub.org/on-storytelling-robots-for-children/

dam-prod.media.mit.edu


In this episode, Lauren Klein interviews Hae Won Park, a Research Scientist in the Personal Robots Group at the MIT Media Lab, about storytelling robots for children. Dr. Park elaborates on enabling robots to understand how children are learning, and how they can help children with literacy skills and encourage exploration.

Hae Won Park

Dr. Hae Won Park is a Research Scientist in the Personal Robots Group at the MIT Media Lab. She is leading the group’s project to enable long-term personalization of artificially intelligent systems, specifically in areas such as early childhood education, healthcare, eldercare, family interaction, and emotional wellness. Prior to her work at the Media Lab, Dr. Park received her PhD in the Human-Automation Systems (HumAnS) Laboratory at Georgia Tech, where she was advised by Professor Ayanna Howard. Dr. Park is also a co-founder of Zyrobotics, a company that uses technology to assist in childhood education.

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