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…
@inproceedings{balaska2026investigating,
bibtex_show = {true},
author = {Balaska, Audrey and Gronbaek, Jens Emil Sloth and Zhang, Chuhan and Sch{\"o}mbs, Sarah and Johal, Wafa},
title = {Investigating Social Robot Proxies to Support Situationally Impaired Users in Hybrid Meetings},
booktitle = {The Augmented Humans International Conference 2026 (AHs 2026)},
year = {2026},
doi = {10.1145/3795011.3795038},
isbn = {979-8-4007-2351-3/2026/03},
address = {Okinawa, Japan},
pdf = {https://chri-lab.github.io/files/papers/Balaska2026.pdf},
publisher = {ACM},
selected = {yes}
}@inproceedings{schombs2025conversation,
bibtex_show = {true},
title = {From Conversation to Orchestration: HCI Challenges and Opportunities in Interactive Multi-Agentic Systems},
author = {Sch{\"o}mbs, Sarah and Zhang, Yan and Goncalves, Jorge and Johal, Wafa},
booktitle = {13th International Conference of Human Agent Interaction (HAI'25)},
selected = {yes},
pdf = {https://chri-lab.github.io/files/papers/hai2025orchestration.pdf},
year = {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}
}
Feb 02, 2026
Congratulations to Muhammad Bilal on successfully completing his Ph.D.! His presentation showcased an impressive range of contributions, from benchmarking LfD algorithms and learning from failed demonstrations to developing the XR system and conducting focus groups. Wishing him all the best in his future endeavors!
Dec 09, 2025
Congratulations to A/Prof. Wafa Johal on receiving the School of CIS 2025 Excellence in Research Award.
Dec 02, 2025
Congratulations to A/Prof. Wafa Johal on receiving funding from the ARC Centre of Excellence.
Dec 02, 2025
Congratulations to Muhammad and co-authors on having their paper Investigating the Impact of Robot Degree of Redundancy on Learning from Demonstration accepted to HRI 2026.
Nov 28, 2025
Audrey's last YoCHI. Farewell, Audrey.
Nov 21, 2025
Muhammad and Ramtin demonstrated Franka and Tiago at CIS.
Nov 14, 2025
Congratulations to Haoqi Li on completing his Master's degree and graduating.
Nov 12, 2025
Yan presented at HAI 2025, sharing the paper From Conversation to Orchestration: HCI Challenges and Opportunities in Interactive Multi-Agentic Systems on behalf of co-authors Sarah Schömbs, Jorge Goncalves, and Wafa Johal. [Read more]
Nov 05, 2025
Farshad successfully passed his PhD confirmation.