Welcome to the Human-inspired Robotics (HiRo) Lab!

We design Teleoperation Interface and Robot Autonomy compatible with the Perception-Action Coupling of human motor control. Our on-going projects include:

• Shared Autonomous Nursing Robots
• Perception-Action Coupling in Robot Teleoperation
• Teleoperation Interface and Assistive Robot Autonomy

We are located on Room 224 at 85 Prescott, a short 10-minute walk from WPI main campus area. Feel free to visit!

Lab Director

• Dr. Jane Li is an Assistant Professor with the Robotics Engineering Department, with an affiliation in Department of Mechanical Engineering, at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester, MA, USA since 2017. She received the M.Sc. degree in Mechanical Engineering from University of Victoria (BC, Canada) in 2009, and the Ph.D. degree in Computer Engineering from the University of California, Santa Cruz (CA, USA) in 2014. From 2015/01 to 2016/04, she was a Postdoctoral Associate with the Duke University. Her current research interest is to design Teleoperation Assistance and Interfaces in Human-Robot Interaction, based on the Perception-Action Coupling of Human Motor Control, for the applications on Nursing Robots. She has been collaborating closely with the faculty of the Nursing Department at Worcester State University, MA, USA.

Prospective Students

• We have several projects open to perspective PhD students and MS students who are looking for thesis topics. Please refer to the list of projects on tele-nursing robot for detailed information.
• We have NSF NRT Fellowships for Perspective PhD students who are US citizens. Check the FORW-RD NRT Program for detailed information.

News

• 2021-03-01 Congratulations to two papers accepted by ICRA 2021
  • Tsung-Chi Lin, Achyuthan Unni Krishnan and Zhi Li, “How People Use Active Telepresence Cameras in Tele-manipulation”, accepted by IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2021. [paper abstract]
  • Alexandra Valiton, Hannah Baez, Naomi Harrison, Justine Roy, and Zhi Li, “Active Telepresence Assistance for Supervisory Control: A User Study with a Multi-Camera Tele-Nursing Robot”, accepted by IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2021. [paper abstract]
• 2020-08-19 Receive NSF National Robotics Initiative (NRI) award
  • NSF Award#2024802 “Collaborative Research: NRI: INT: Transparent and Intuitive Teleoperation Interfaces for the Future Nursing Robots and Workers“, PI: Jane Li, Co-PI: Cagdas Onal, Jie Fu, Jeanine Skorinko and Yunus Telliel; $731,329, 2020/09/01-2023/08/31, in collaboration with the Nursing Department of Worcester State University,. The three year continuing project is jointly funded by NSF and NIOSH/CDC. (see the CDC media release).
• 2020-08-18 Congratulations to Achyuthan Krishnan’s Master thesis defense! 
• 2020-06-30 Congratulations to Sam, Keion and Michael’s paper with IROS 2020
  • Samuel White, Keion Bisland, Michael Collins, and Zhi Li,  “Design of a High-level Teleoperation Interface Resilient to the Effects of Unreliable Robot Autonomy“, In 2020 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), pp. 11519-11524, IEEE, 2020.
• 2020-06-01 Congratulations to two papers published with ICRA 2020
  • Tsung-Chi Lin, Achyuthan Unni Krishnan and Zhi Li, “Shared Autonomous Interface for Reducing Physical Effort in Robot Teleoperation via Human Motion Mapping“, in 2020 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2020.
  • Alexandra Valiton and Zhi Li, “Perception-Action Coupling in Usage of Telepresence Cameras“,  in 2020 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA),  pp. 3846-3852. IEEE, 2020,  Finalist of Best Paper for Human-Robot Interaction PDF
• 2020-01-12 Congratulations to Mike Twardowski‘s defense! First PhD student from HiRo Lab.
• 2019-11-26 Congratulations to Hideyuki Kimpara and Kenechukwu Mbanisi’s journal publication
  • Hideyuki Kimpara, Kenechukwu Mbanisi, Zhi Li, Karen Troy, Danil Prokhorov, Michael Gennert, “Force anticipation and its potential implications on feedforward and feedback human motor control“, in Human Factors: The Journal of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, 2020. PDF
• 2019-08-20 Received NSF grant
  • NSF Award#1922761 “NRT-FW-HTF: Robotic Interfaces and Assistants for the Future of Work”, PI: Cagdas Onal, Co-PI: Jing Xiao, Zhi Li, Pratap Rao and Yunus Telliel; $2,999,998.00, 2019/09/01-2024/08/31.
• 2019-06-20 Congratulations to TC Lin and Achyuthan‘s paper accepted by IROS 2019
  • Tsung-Chi Lin, Achyuthan Unni Krishnan and Zhi Li, “Physical Fatigue Analysis of Assistive Robot Teleoperation via Whole-body Motion Mapping“, in 2019 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS). IEEE, 2019, pp. 2240–2245. PDF
• 2019-04-26 Congratulations to Heramb Nemlekar‘s thesis defense!
• 2019-01-25 Congratulations to Heramb and Dharini’s paper accepted by ICRA 2019
  • Heramb Nemlekar, Dharini Dutia, Zhi Li, “Object Transfer Point Estimation for Fluent Human-Robot Handovers”, in 2019 International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), pp. 2627-2633. IEEE, 2019. PDF
• 2018-06-29 Congratulations to Kene’s paper accepted by IROS 2018
  •  Kenechukwu C. Mbanisi, Hideyuki Kimpara, Tess Meier, Michael Gennert and Zhi Li “Learning Coordinated Vehicle Maneuver Motion Primitives from Human Demonstration”, In 2018 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), pp. 6560-6565. PDF