Carnegie Mellon University Robotics Institute

It’s time to give it up again for our HRI 2026 awardees!👏🏻🏆 Congratulations to all the winners and to the nominees as well! 🍾 ⏱️Test of Time Awards “Common metrics for human-robot interaction” Aaron Steinfeld, Terrence Fong, David Kaber, Michael Lewis, Jean Scholtz, Alan Schultz, Michael Goodrich “Legibility and predictability of robot motion” Anca Dragan Dragan, Kenton Lee, Siddhartha Srinivasa 📑Full Papers 📇User Studies Track “Expensive, Limited, and Still Here: The Paradox of Weak Robots in Family Homes”, Zhao Zhao “Fictional vs. Factual Robot Tutor Dialogue Can Shape Child Social-Emotional Learning” Lauren L. Wright, Kaitlyn Li, Hewitt Watkins, Kiljoong Kim, Sarah Sebo. “Long-Term Integration of a Robot in an Inclusive Daycare: An Ethnographic Study Focused on Children and Caregivers” Jan Ole Rixen , Kathrin Gerling, Barbara Bruno 🖌️Design Track “Robot-Mediated Mutual Gaze: How a Mobile Robot with Actuated Mirrors Facilitates Encounters between Strangers” Serena Ge Guo , Jenny J. Yu, Wenqian Niu, Yifei Gao, Guy Hoffman, Gilly Leshed, and Keith Evan Green 🔗Systems Track “WAFFLE: A Wearable Approach to Bite Timing Estimation in Robot-Assisted Feeding” Akhil Padmanabha , Jessie Yuan, Tanisha S. Mehta, Rajat Kumar Jenamani, Eric Hu, Victoria de León, Anthony Wertz, Janavi Gupta, Ben Dodson, Yunting Yan, Carmel Majidi, Tapomayukh Bhattacharjee, and Zackory Erickson ⚙️Technical Track “Context-Aware Generation and Modulation of Expressive Motion Behavior using Multimodal Foundation Models” Till Hielscher, Fabio Scaparro, and Kai O. Arras 📜Theory Track “Can VR Robots Stand in for the Real Thing? Comparing a Physical Cobot and Its Virtual Twin for User Perceptions, Experimental Effects, and Study Costs” Martina Mara, Andreas Winklbauer, Sandra Maria Siedl, and Benedikt Leichtmann 💡Late Breaking Reports 🥇Best LBR “Beyond Justification: Command Rejections That Include Constructive Elaborations May Improve Evaluations of Trustworthiness” Gordon Briggs and Christina Wasylyshyn 🥇Best LBR Runners-up “Robots in the Room: A Qualitative Exploration of Democratic Agency and AI-Augmented Deliberations” Damith Herath, Hans Asenbaum, Janie Busby Grant, Maleen Jayasuriya, Emanuela Savini, and Harshith Ghanta “Dynamic Pedestrian Flow Guidance through Multi-robot Interaction along Human Crowd Boundaries” Ryusei Shigemoto, Hiroki Kimura, and Ryosuke Tasaki 📜Best Short Contribution “Quest2ROS2: A ROS 2 Framework for Bi-manual VR Teleoperation” Jialong Li, Zhenguo Wang, Tianci Wang, Maj Stenmark and Volker Krueger 📎See all other awards: https://lnkd.in/ehaaYap3

Interlocking bricks aren’t just toys, they unlock an infinite space of creativity and a powerful foundation for physical and spatial intelligence. 💡 But how well do we truly understand what we build? What happens when these structures face real-world forces, for example robotic manipulation? 🚀 Introducing #BrickSim — the first physics-based simulator for interlocking brick assemblies. #BrickSim reveals how forces propagate through complex builds, accurately simulating assembly, disassembly, and structural collapse in real time. More than a simulator, #BrickSim is a unified virtual platform for robotics and Physical AI: 🤖 Seamless integration with diverse robotic systems 🧠 Develop and deploy intelligent control policies 🎮 Real-time teleoperation for interactive dexterous manipulation 🏟️ A unified platform for physical and spatial intelligence 🔧 Lowering the barrier to study contact-rich, ultra long-horizon tasks 🙌 Huge thanks to our amazing team! Haowei Wen, Weiyi Piao, Siyu Li, Changliu Liu 🌐 Code: https://lnkd.in/ehcMPJbe Paper: https://lnkd.in/eSpbXc3b #Robotics #Simulation #PhysicalAI #EmbodiedAI #Manipulation #Brick #Assembly

Over the past few nights in Texas, Team Chiron has been running late-night field integration tests for the DARPA Triage Challenge. Autonomous systems don’t get built in conference rooms. They come together in parking lots, under floodlights, surrounded by laptops, cables, robots, and a group of incredibly dedicated engineers and scientists working through the night to make systems talk to each other. We couldn’t do it without Dee Dee Leverett and @Brian Watford, Sonic Opperations in Bryan, Tx. In these tests we’re bringing together: • Autonomous ground robots • UAV sensing platforms • Multimodal perception (visual, thermal, and physiological signals) • Edge compute and distributed AI • Real-time reporting pipelines aligned with triage scoring And Food for us and the robots- thank you BD for extra batteries!! The goal is simple but profound: help responders assess casualties faster and more safely in mass-casualty environments. What I love most about moments like this is watching the team. LHM, Graduate students, engineers, and pI’s and staff researchers huddled around robots at midnight, debugging ROS nodes, tuning sensors, and solving problems in real time. This is what innovation actually looks like. Grateful to work alongside such a talented and committed group of people who believe technology can help save lives when seconds matter most. Onward DARPA Workshop III at Disaster City. #DARPA #Robotics #Autonomy #AI #HumanMachineTeaming #DisasterResponse #CMURobotics #TeamChiron