Toward Fluent Collaboration in Human-Robot Teams

Tariq Iqbal
Systems Engineering & Computer Science, University of Virginia

Time: 2023-11-08, 12:00 - 13:00 ET
Location: Rice 540 and Zoom

Abstract Robots currently have the capacity to help people in several fields, including health care, assisted living, and manufacturing, where the robots must share physical space and actively interact with people in teams. The performance of these teams depends upon how fluently all team members can jointly perform their tasks. To succeed within a group, a robot must be able to perceive other members’ actions, model interaction dynamics, predict future actions, and adapt their plans in real-time. In the Collaborative Robotics Lab (CRL), we develop novel perception, prediction, and planning algorithms for robots to coordinate and collaborate with people in complex human environments fluently. In this talk, I will highlight various challenges of deploying robots in real-world settings and present our recent work to tackle several of these challenges.

Bio Tariq Iqbal is an Assistant Professor of Systems Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Virginia (UVA). Prior to joining UVA, he was a Postdoctoral Associate in the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL) at MIT. He received his Ph.D. in CS from the University of California San Diego (UCSD). Iqbal leads the Collaborative Robotics Lab (CRL), which focuses on building robotic systems that work alongside people in complex human environments, such as factories, hospitals, and educational settings. His research group develops artificial intelligence, computer vision, and machine learning algorithms to enable robots to solve problems in these domains.