The development of robots that work cooperatively with people is of critical importance for furthering advancements in manufacturing, medicine, healthcare, military, and consumer applications. Critical to this goal is the development of technologies that are adaptable to changing task and user needs.
The Robot Autonomy and Interactive Learning research group at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) focuses on the development of interactive robotic and software systems. Our work aims to provide everyday people with the ability to customize the functionality of autonomous devices. Our research spans the fields of robot learning, adjustable autonomy, crowdsourcing, multi-robot teaming and human-robot interaction.
News
[02/08/2012] Sonia Chernova wins NSF CAREER award titled “Towards Robots that Learn from Everyday People”.
[02/01/2012] “A Practical Comparison of Three Robot Learning from Demonstration Algorithms” nominated for Best Late Breaking report at HRI2012.
[12/16/2011] Two RAIL late breaking reports will be presented at the Human-Robot Interaction conference 2012: “Policy Transformation for Learning from Demonstration” and “A Practical Comparison of Three Robot Learning from Demonstration Algorithms”.
[08/11/2011] Sonia Chernova has been awarded an NSF grant for work on interactive tablet technologies for early childhood literacy.
[08/09/2011] BBC Coverage – Crowdsourcing Robots: Sonia Chernova talks about the MIT Media Lab project on crowdsourcing human-robot interaction on the BBC Click radio show.
[07/26/2011] New Scientist article highlights crowdsourcing HRI project.
[07/10/11] The WPI Warriors team made it to the top 16 in their first RoboCup competition! Here is an article describing the event and team.
[06/08/2011] A RAIL paper is accepted to the IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics: “A Comparison of Two Algorithms for Robot Learning from Demonstration.”
[05/06/2011] Two RAIL papers have been accepted to the IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human Interaction Communication (Ro-Man): “Effect of the Human Guidance and State Space Size on Interactive Reinforcement Learning” and “Crowdsourcing Human-Robot Interaction: Application from Virtual to Physical Worlds.”
[04/26/2011] NPR Coverage – The Future of Robots: Sonia Chernova took part in a discussion on the future of robotic technologies on NPR’s Emily Rooney Show.
