PhD Thesis Defense
Marynel Vázquez
Carnegie Mellon University

Reasoning About Spatial Patterns of Human Behavior During Group Conversations with Robots

GHC 4405

Abstract: The goal of this dissertation is to develop computational models for robots to detect and sustain the spatial patterns of behavior that naturally emerge during free-standing group conversations with people. These capabilities have often been overlooked by the Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) community, but they are essential for robots to appropriately interact with and around [...]

PhD Thesis Defense
Shervin Javdani
Carnegie Mellon University

Acting under Uncertainty for Information Gathering and Shared Autonomy

GHC 8102

Abstract: Acting under uncertainty is a fundamental challenge for any decision maker in the real world. As uncertainty is often the culprit of failure, many prior works attempt to reduce the problem to one with a known state. However, this fails to account for a key property of acting under uncertainty: we can often gain [...]

Student Talks
Supreeth Achar
Carnegie Mellon University

Active Illumination for the Real World

GHC 8102

Abstract: Active illumination systems use a controllable light source and a light sensor to measure properties of a scene. For such a system to work reliably across a wide range of environments it must be able to handle the effects of global light transport, bright ambient light, interference from other active illumination devices, defocus, and [...]

PhD Thesis Defense
Nathan Brooks
Carnegie Mellon University

Situational Awareness and Mixed Initiative Markup for Human-Robot Team Plans

NSH 1305

Abstract: As robots become more reliable and user interfaces (UI) become more powerful, human-robot teams are being applied to more real world problems. Human-robot teams offer redundancy and heterogeneous capabilities desirable in scientific investigation, surveillance, disaster response, and search and rescue operations. Large teams are overwhelming for a human operator, so systems employ high level [...]