I recently started my Ph.D. at Mines.
Moving into Human-Robot Interaction marks a shift in how I think about computation. Most of my undergraduate work focused on discrete systems where the domain was well-bounded. Robotics breaks that isolation. It’s a physical object sitting in the middle of a room, staring at you, taking up space, making you believe it feels, and completely ups the vibes of whoever’s in the room.
what I’m digging into
A few things I want to figure out over the next few years:
how much does the body matter? Does putting an AI into a physical robot help people feel heard or less judged during sensitive talks? is there a gap for potential between digital and human agents?
Who writes the rules? Letting the people who actually use the space set the robot’s boundaries, instead of engineers hardcoding whatever they assume is polite. Examine power structures, dynamics, and engage in participatory design to avert these norms.
Knowing when to walk away: Figure out where a machine can genuinely help people find resources, and be faithfully honest about where tech needs to avoid overreaching and leave human problems for human beings.