Human-Robot Interaction and Collaboration
As robots become a more integral part of our everyday lives, interactions with robot will become more common. Through the use of Extended Reality (XR), we enable users to interact with robots in a more immersive way, allowing them to better understand the robot’s capabilities and limitations. We explore the use of robots in XR as a safe, immersive, and helpful teaching tool to allow users of varying robotics experiences to interact with robots. We also investigate how users respond to different types of robot interactions as well as alternate methods for robot control like brain-computer interfaces.
Immersive HRI
Research projects exploring Extended Reality (XR) as an immersive interface for interactive robot motion planning and learning from human demonstration.
Interactive Planning
We explore collaborative motion planning methods where humans and automated planners work together, combining human spatial intuition with planner precision and speed to solve challenging planning problems.
Neural Interfaces for Assistive Robotics
Research projects using neural activity — including EEG-based brain-computer interfaces (BCI) — for assistive robotics, rehabilitation, and robot error detection.
Human-Robot Communication
Research exploring how robots can interpret natural language instructions to extract constraints and preferences, enabling planners to generate motion plans aligned with human intent.
Publications
- Ngui, I. , McBeth, C. , Santos, A. , He, G. , Mimnaugh, K.J. , Motes, J.D. , Soares, L. , Morales, M. , & Amato, N.M. (2025). ERUPT: An Open Toolkit for Interfacing with Robot Motion Planners in Extended Reality. ArXiv Preprint. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2510.02464
- Ngui, I. , McBeth, C. , He, G. , Santos, A.C. , Soares, L. , Morales, M. , & Amato, N.M. (2024). Extended Reality System for Robotic Learning from Human Demonstration. ArXiv Preprint. arXiv
- Denny, J. , Sandstrom, R. , & Amato, N.M. (2018). A General Region-Based Framework for Collaborative Planning. In Proc. Inter. Symp. on Robotics Research (ISRR 2015). Springer Proceedings in Advanced Robotics , 563--579. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-60916-4_32
- Denny, J. , Colbert, J. , Hongsen, Q. , & Amato, N.M. (2016). On the theory of user-guided planning. 2016 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) , 4794-4801. https://doi.org/10.1109/IROS.2016.7759704
- Denny, J. , Sandstrom, R. , Julian, N. , & Amato, N.M. (2014). A Region-Based Strategy for Collaborative Roadmap Construction. Algorithmic Foundations of Robotics XI: Selected Contributions of the Eleventh International Workshop on the Algorithmic Foundations of Robotics , 125--141. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16595-0_8