Welcome to the Human-Robot Interaction Research team at the University of Melbourne.

Our mission is to create autonomous robots that act smoothly and safely with humans. We focus on key areas such as behavioural analytics, co-learning environments for humans and robots, and the personalization and adaptation of autonomous robots to enhance their performance in human interactions.

We are at the leading edge of human-robot interaction research, addressing challenges such as safe drone navigation in crowded spaces, personalized learning solutions with assistive robots, and visualizing uncertainty in high-stake scenarios involving robots…

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Selected Recent Publications

  1. “I can feel the risks by looking at the robot face”: Communicating Risk through a Physical Agent
    Schömbs, Sarah, Goncalves, Jorge, and Johal, Wafa
    In Proceedings of the Designing Interactive Systems Conference (DIS ’25) Jul 2025
    @inproceedings{schombs2025dis,
      bibtex_show = {true},
      author = {Sch{\"o}mbs, Sarah and Goncalves, Jorge and Johal, Wafa},
      title = {``I can feel the risks by looking at the robot face'':  Communicating  Risk  through a Physical Agent},
      booktitle = {Proceedings of the Designing Interactive Systems Conference (DIS '25)},
      year = {2025},
      month = jul,
      dates = {4--9},
      location = {Madeira, Portugal},
      acmdoi = {10.1145/3715336.3735759},
      acmisbn = {979-8-4007-1485-6/2025/07},
      publisher = {ACM},
      pdf = {https://chri-lab.github.io/files/papers/schombs2025dis.pdf},
      selected = {yes},
      project = {robotvis}
    }
  2. Can you pass that tool?: Implications of indirect speech in physical human-robot collaboration
    Zhang, Yan, Ratnayake, Tharaka Sachintha, Sew, Cherie, Knibbe, Jarrod, Goncalves, Jorge, and Johal, Wafa
    In Proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’25) Jul 2025
  3. Mr.LfD: A Mixed Reality Interface for Robot Learning from Demonstration
    Chen, Jiahao, Chacon, Antony, Bilal, Muhammad, Zhou, Qiushi, and Johal, Wafa
    In Proceedings of the 36th Australian Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (OzCHI ’24), November 30–December 4, 2024, Brisbane, Australia Jul 2024
  4. Illusion Spaces in VR: The Interplay Between Size and Taper Angle Perception in Grasping
    Zhang, Jian, Knibbe, Jarrod, and Johal, Wafa
    In Proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’25) Jul 2025
    @inproceedings{jian2025,
      bibtex_show = {true},
      author = {Zhang, Jian and Knibbe, Jarrod and Johal, Wafa},
      title = {Illusion Spaces in VR: The Interplay Between Size and Taper Angle Perception in Grasping},
      booktitle = {Proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '25)},
      year = {2025},
      location = {Yokohama, Japan},
      acmdoi = {10.1145/3706598.3714162},
      acmisbn = {979-8-4007-1394-1/25/04},
      publisher = {ACM},
      pdf = {https://chri-lab.github.io/files/papers/jian2025.pdf},
      selected = {yes}
    }
  5. Effects of Shared Control on Cognitive Load and Trust in Teleoperated Trajectory Tracking
    Pan, Jiahe, Eden, Jonathan, Oetomo, Denny, and Johal, Wafa
    IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters Jul 2024
    @article{pan2024,
      bibtex_show = {true},
      author = {Pan, Jiahe and Eden, Jonathan and Oetomo, Denny and Johal, Wafa},
      journal = {IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters},
      title = {Effects of Shared Control on Cognitive Load and Trust in Teleoperated Trajectory Tracking},
      year = {2024},
      volume = {9},
      number = {6},
      pages = {5863-5870},
      video = {https://youtu.be/yizsBG1QJog},
      doi = {10.1109/LRA.2024.3396111},
      pdf = {https://chri-lab.github.io/files/papers/pan2024.pdf},
      selected = {yes}
    }

News

May 11, 2025
Tharaka gets confirmed!

May 2, 2025
Yan receives the Diane Lemaire scholarship to do a research stay in Europe!

April 29, 2025
Jian presents a full paper at CHI25! [Read it]

April 29, 2025
Yan presents a full paper at CHI25!

April 5, 2025
Yan receives a Google Travel Grant to attend CHI25 in Japan!

Mar 05, 2025
Yan, Sarah, Ramtin and Muhammad present a poster at HRI25!

Mar 05, 2025
Ramtin and Yan present a full and short paper at HRI25!

Mar 04, 2025
Sarah Schombs hosts a workshop on Sustainability at HRI25!

Mar 04, 2025
A/Prof. Johal gives a keynote talk at the VAM-HRI workshop at HRI25!

... see all News