CHCI Research

Research discussion groups

Computing and Social Change

Weekly, every Monday, 1-2pm, starting Feb 20
TORG room 1100C
Host: Shaddi Hasan

The goal of “Computing and Social Change” is a community-driven effort to bring together faculty and students to discuss designing technology and analyzing its role in affecting social change and sustainable development. We plan to host discussions based on papers and seminars with guest speakers across different disciplines and departments.

Human Factors in Human-Robot Interaction

Biweekly, every other Thursday, 3-4pm, starting Feb 23
Virtual, Zoom link
Host: Nazila Roofigari-Esfahan

Robots including wearables robots, are, or soon will be used in many critical domains such as search and rescue, construction, military battle, mine and bomb detection, scientific exploration, and hospital care. Such robots must coordinate their behaviors with the requirements and expectations of human team members. Human factors in human–robot interaction (HRI) such as comfort and trust are critical to enable high-quality human–robot teamwork.

This topic group intends to review the state of art and articles discussing and addressing the design, development, and application of human factors related research questions in HRI. Studies which focus on computational modeling and interactive robots in different methodological roles to explore questions about social development with robots including, but not limited to, psychology, cognitive science, HCI, human factors, artificial intelligence will be discussed.

Potential topics include but are not limited to the following:

• User studies of HRI;
• Experiments on HRI collaboration;
• Human comfort and trust in HRI;
• Decision making and emotion recognition in HRI;
• Psychology modeling and application in HRI;
• Multi-modal interaction;
• Robot autonomy;
• Cognitive control for heterogenous teaming;
• HRI group dynamics;
• Task allocation and coordination;
• Distributed cognition (or distributed cognitive systems);
• HRI communication;
• Robot–team learning;
• Assistive robotics;
• Risks such as privacy or safety;
• Awareness and monitoring of humans

DISIS Audio Research Seminar

Weekly, every Tuesday (2 - 3:15 pm)
Newman Library room 121
Host: Ico Bukvic

Did you know that sound and music play a critical role in many design and research fields? Would you like to participate in an informal research community to explore these exciting opportunities and learn more?

Every Tuesday from 2 pm to 315pm, Ico Bukvic will lead a voluntary/informal DISIS Audio Research Seminar. The seminar will take place in Newman 121, a.k.a. DISIS (directions). 

As some of you may already be aware, Creative Technologies in Music (CTLA) has two tracks. One is composition- and performance-centric, and the other is research-centric. While we have had past students engaged in audio research, and whose projects have led to some particularly notable successes, this area has not seen as much representation within the program as the composition- and performance-centric track. 

With the newfound studio schedule within the Music program, we now have every Tuesday 2-315 pm open for an informal research seminar designed to address this gap, thus allowing students to learn more about this area and both students and faculty to engage in the research and professional opportunities it may offer for both. The seminar is imagined to also serve as an opportunity to engage guest researchers to share their work with students.

With this in mind, Prof. Bukvic invites all interested CTLA and DISIS students and any other students who may not be a part of these two communities and who share this same interest, as well as interested faculty, to consider joining the voluntary seminar in DISIS. 

Time permitting, please consider bringing information (articles, weblinks, YouTube videos, etc.) on relevant projects (your own or those made by others that you would like to share with the group) to the seminar to share and discuss.

Please feel free to share this announcement with other students and faculty who may be also interested in participating.

VT-affiliated students and faculty can see updated, detailed information about the research groups here.

Research Labs directed by CHCI Faculty

CHCI Faculty also direct a variety of research labs in different areas (see list below). VT-affiliated students and faculty can find more information about the lab meeting schedules here in order to drop by or join meetings and learn more about the research.

Recent Projects