My research is situated in the areas of human robot interaction and assistive technology. I focus on the design of new technologies that can support disabled people and their families in community settings, and clinicians and patients in acute care.
Our research informs work across multiple disciplines, including: robotics, health informatics, design, and public health. You can read more of our recent papers here, and learn more about working in the lab and the kinds of research we do here.
My students and I engage in participatory, community-based research practices to center the voices of individuals historically excluded from technology design and development, and are committed to exploring the ethical, legal, and social implications (ELSI) of our research.
Here are a few recent project highlights:
Cognitively assistive robots
For the past six years we have been collaboratively designing and developing new technologies to support people with mild cognitive impairment to those with late stage dementia. This includes social robots that can extend access by supporting cognitive neurorehabilitation at home and robots to support caregivers at mealtimes (Bouzida et al., HRI 2024, Kubota et al. HRI 2023, HRI 2022, HRI 2020; Guan et al., CHI 2021, Moharana et al., HRI 2019).
This also includes efforts that explore systems which can engage in long term learning and adaptation (Woodworth et al., MLHC 2018; Wang et al. AISTATS 2021), and adaptive systems for rehabilitation (Bestmann et al., HRI 2024).
Clinically assistive robots (acute and critical care)
We have several projects centered on supporting clinicians and patients in acute care environments, including the emergency department (ED), as well as critical care (e.g., the ICU). Here, we have been designing low-cost, open source telemedical robots that can keep healthcare workers safe, and extend access to patients, particularly those from low-resource settings. (Matsumoto et al., HRI 2023, Pervasive Health 2021).
We are also designing new methods for understanding clinical team behavior in real time, and use that to inform how robots should act, such as when supporting teams in high-acute situations ( Taylor et al., HRI 2022, ICRA 2021, CSCW 2019, Haripriyan et al., RO-MAN 2024), and exploring the design of resilient hospitals of the future (Taylor et al., CSCW 2022).
Coordination methods to improve autonomy for physically assistive robots
We also do a lot of basic research which informs these domains. Some of our recent work focuses on facilitating autonomy - it is important that robots are able to do the right thing, at the right time, and in the right way, especially in safety critical settings. For example, we created a series of methods to model human-human and human robot synchrony that can inform coordinated robot behavior, validated in experimental settings (Iqbal et al., T-AC 2015, T-RO 2016, RA-L 2017, ICRA 2021).
Critical health technology design + ELSI
We are also work on critical health technology design, and ELSI issues. For example, we've explored how to engage in value-centric design processes when creating assistive and personalized robots for people with dementia that support their autonomy (Kubota et al., We Robot 2021, Guan et al., CHI 2021), ways to reflect social models of disability to reframe assistive robotics (Lee and Riek, THRI 2022, THRI 2018), and ways to design for exit (Bjorling and Riek, We Robot 2022)
Healthcare Robotics Lab, Jun 2021