CS547 Human-Computer Interaction Seminar   (Seminar on People, Computers, and Design)

Fridays 11:30am-12:30pm PT · Gates B3 · Open to the public
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Lawrence Kim
Stanford University
Thesis Defense: Designing In-situ Interaction with Ubiquitous Robots
January 31, 2020

As robots begin to operate in our personal space and collaborate with us, it is important to investigate how to implement seamless integration of robots to assist humans in every aspect of life. Swarms of cm-scale non-anthropomorphic robots are particularly interesting as their appearance and size enable seamless transition between blending into the environment, becoming "invisible" to users, and performing everyday tasks such as object manipulation through collective means. My research aims toward building and designing human-centered multi-robot platforms that prioritize in-situ interaction with users over task-oriented objectives such as completion time. Specifically, I investigated how to layer expressiveness and intent on top of existing swarm robot motion and sought to understand how humans naturally communicate with and through many robots.


Lawrence Kim is a PhD candidate in Mechanical Engineering at Stanford University where he is advised by Sean Follmer. His research lies at the intersection of human-computer interaction, robotics, and haptics with a focus on studying the interaction with multi-robot systems. He has received best paper and best paper honorable mention awards at CHI and UIST, and a Fast Company's honorable mention award in Innovation by Design. He is also a recipient of a Samsung Scholarship.