About

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. 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 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}
    }
  2. Robot-Assisted Decision-Making: Unveiling the Role of Uncertainty Visualisation and Embodiment
    Schömbs, Sarah, Pareek, Saumya, Goncalves, Jorge, and Johal, Wafa
    In Proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’24) May 2024
    @inproceedings{schombs2024b,
      bibtex_show = {true},
      author = {Sch{\"o}mbs, Sarah and Pareek, Saumya and Goncalves, Jorge and Johal, Wafa},
      title = {Robot-Assisted Decision-Making: Unveiling the Role of Uncertainty Visualisation and Embodiment},
      booktitle = {Proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '24)},
      year = {2024},
      month = may,
      dates = {11--16},
      location = {Honolulu, HI, USA},
      acmdoi = {10.1145/3613904.3642911},
      acmisbn = {979-8-4007-0330-0/24/05},
      publisher = {ACM},
      pdf = {https://chri-lab.github.io/files/papers/schombs2024.pdf},
      video = {https://youtu.be/8zgKpGTkMCI},
      selected = {yes}
    }
  3. FaceVis: Exploring a Robot’s Face for Affective Visualisation Design
    Schömbs, Sarah, Pan, Jiahe, Zhang, Yan, Goncalves, Jorge, and Johal, Wafa
    May 2024
    @article{schombs2024facevis,
      bibtex_show = {true},
      title = {FaceVis: Exploring a Robot’s Face for Affective Visualisation Design},
      author = {Sch{\"o}mbs, Sarah and Pan, Jiahe and Zhang, Yan and Goncalves, Jorge and Johal, Wafa},
      booktitle = {Proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '24)},
      pdf = {https://chri-lab.github.io/files/papers/schombs2024b.pdf},
      year = {2024},
      video = {https://youtu.be/Q1H0tA2EWy8},
      website = {https://sites.google.com/view/facevis/home},
      selected = {yes}
    }
  4. User Interface Interventions for Improving Robot Learning from Demonstration
    Phaijit, Ornnalin, Sammut, Claude, and Johal, Wafa
    In Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Human-Agent Interaction May 2023
    @inproceedings{phaijit2023user,
      bibtex_show = {true},
      title = {User Interface Interventions for Improving Robot Learning from Demonstration},
      author = {Phaijit, Ornnalin and Sammut, Claude and Johal, Wafa},
      booktitle = {Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Human-Agent Interaction},
      pdf = {https://chri-lab.github.io/files/papers/phaijit2021.pdf},
      pages = {152--161},
      year = {2023},
      selected = {yes}
    }
  5. Research Trends in Social Robots for Learning
    Johal, Wafa
    Current Robotics Reports May 2020
    @article{johal2020research,
      bibtex_show = {true},
      title = {Research Trends in Social Robots for Learning},
      author = {Johal, Wafa},
      journal = {Current Robotics Reports},
      pages = {1--9},
      year = {2020},
      publisher = {Springer International Publishing},
      selected = {yes}
    }

News

Apr 19, 2024
Dr Wafa Johal gave a demo with Furhat at the opening of the Cremone Digital Hub.

Apr 19, 2024
Sarah Schombs receives the Diane Lemaire scholarship!

Apr 19, 2024
Muhammad Bilal successfully passed is confirmation!

Apr 14, 2024
Jiahe Pan's paper accepted at RA-L and IROS.

Mar 16, 2024
\#TeamMelbourne wins the HRI2024 Robot Competition in Boulder Colorado

Mar 16, 2024
Dr Wafa Johal will be General co-Chair of HRI2025 in Melbourne, Australia

... see all News