December 2021
Visiting Researcher at Purdue - Smart Lab
From March 2022-May 2022 I will be working with Dr.Byung-Cheol Min at Smart lab Purdue, conducting early studies of my post-doctoral research. Nervous and excited for this new journey away from what was home all these years - <3 R-House lab <3 and IU
August 2021
Update on NSF-CI Fellow 2021
Super excited to share that for my post-doctoral research in 2022, I will be co-advised by Dr.Narges Mahyar - UMass Amherst and Dr.Wendy Ju - Cornell University. I will conduct my research in some of the most lively and busy pedestrian spaces in Boston and New York!!
June 2021
NSF-CI Fellow 2021
I have been selected as one of the Computing Innovation fellows (CI Fellow 2021) by the National Science Foundation (NSF) for a 2-year post-doctoral research award as a high-achieving computing Ph.D. candidate, based on a track record of research accomplishments and merits of my research proposal. Find me in the links below ;)
https://cifellows2021.org/2021-class/
Announcing the 2021 Computing Innovation Fellows » CCC Blog
April 2021
Exciting Collaboration with Toyota Research Institute
Excited to share that along with my advisor - Dr. Selma Sabanovic, and Dr. Kate Tsui and Abhijeet Agnihotri from Toyota Research Institute, I have been involved in the development of a winning grant Toyota Research Institute Toyota Research University 2.0. As a part of the AI expansion of Toyota Research Institute, in the coming years, we will study and design interactions for social robots to support community engagement and Ikigai—a Japanese concept that pertains to having a purpose in life—for older adults. Read more here.
March 2021
HRI 2021 Student Design Competition
Recently our team won the "Best Student Design Competition CREATIVITY Award" at HRI2021! The SDC theme was “A Robot to Support Us Through Lockdown” and we made a popcorn robot that accompanies in movie watching :)
Link to paper: https://lnkd.in/gaak3z5
Link to a demo video: https://lnkd.in/gURykvc
My contribution: Conceptualization and design development of the idea through data collection, guiding the team through presentation and ethical implications.
HRI 2021 LBR
We presented our first exploratory ideas on food as a medium for social expression or building relationships with social robots through our LBR at HRI. We presented design implications of food for HRI, to urge HRI researchers to envision food as a facet of Human-Robot relationships and <--Human-Food-Robot--> interaction as a celebratory, provocative, and promising domain for HRI and social robot design.
Link to Paper: Swapna Joshi*, Waki Kamino* and Selma Sabanovic "Food For Human-Robot-Interaction". *(First co-authors)
My contribution: Identifying potential topic of Human-Food-Robot Interaction from a larger study of Accessories for Social Robots, and developing exploratory questions, design, and ethical implications.
HRI 2021 Workshop Paper
At HRI 2021 Interactive Workshop on Clothes For Robots, we presented our paper on emergent non-utilitarian values of robot clothing for Human-robot interaction (HRI) through 1) observation of available clothing products for robots and use of clothing items by robot owners.
Link to Paper: Waki Kamino, Selma Sabanovic and Swapna Joshi "Emergent Design Of Social Robot Clothes For Social and Cultural Integration".
August 2020
Conference paper
Our research on people's perspectives of robots as Companions through COVID-19 Social Isolation, has been selected for publication at ICSR 2020 with my awesome co-authors in November 2020. The paper extends existing research on the use of robots for COVID-19 Pandemic and specific aspects of companionship with tabletop robots.
Swapna Joshi, Sawyer Collins, et al. "Social Robots for Socio-Physical Distancing." Social Robotics: 12th International Conference, ICSR 2020, Golden, Colarado, November 14–16, 2020.
April- July 2020
Workshop papers
I am presenting two workshop papers this summer:
'Body work in HRI' at Roman 2020 workshop - Designerly HRI, which discusses the need for designing human-robot interactions to consider the body as a challenging workspace for telepresence users.
'Robots as Sensitive Companions through Physical Distancing' at DIS 2020 workshop - Expressive/Sensitive, which conceptualizes sensitivities that surfaced from one of our Mturk-based study on robot use during COVID-19 social distancing time.
Poster
Our poster "Substituting Restorative Benefits of Being Outdoors through Interactive Augmented Spatial Soundscapes" was selected for presentation at the Assets 2020 Conference.
Innovation Challenge - Award
Our proposal for an AR/VR based spatial audio interactive technology for elderly people in assisted living centers - was selected to be third place in the Prevention Insights Big Idea Challenge at Indiana University, as an innovative approach to address most complex issues related to mental health.
March 2020
ABD!!
I successfully reached 'All But Dissertation' stage in my Ph.D. (Yay!!!) with the guidance and lots of support from my wonderful committee members - Dr.Selma Sabanovic, Dr. Christena Nippert-Eng, Dr.Erik Stolterman, and Dr. Norman Su.
SV Chair for HRI 2020
I am the Student Volunteer Co-chair for HRI 2020 along with Bahar Irfan (University of Plymouth, UK) and Christopher Wallbridge (University of Plymouth, UK).
March- October 2019
Doctoral Colloquium and Workshop presentation
My ongoing doctoral research has been selected for presentation at CSCW 2019, Austin, USA, and ECSCW 2019- Vienna, Austria.
I will be presenting a paper 'Unveiling Care Networks around the Use of Robots' co-authored with my adviser Dr. Selma Sabanovic at ECSCW 2019 workshop - 'Who Cares? Exploring the Concept of Care Networks for Designing Healthcare Technologies'.
Research Recognition
Our paper on 'Robots for Intergenerational Interactions' was nominated for Best Paper (Top 3%) - User Study Category - HRI 2019, South Korea.
January 2019
Volunteering at HRI 2019
Travel - booked! Registration - done! Student volunteering application - Accepted!!! Certainly a good start for 2019.
HRI 2019- Paper Accepted!
Our exploratory paper on the community-oriented use of 'Robots for Intergenerational Interactions' has been accepted for 2019 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction - Daegu, Korea (24% Acceptance).
December 2018
IEEE History of Robotics
Interviewed expert, pioneer and entrepreneur roboticists -Dr. John Leonard, Dr. Cynthia Breazeal and Helen Greiner in Boston, as a research assistant on IEEE robotics history: Narratives and Networks project.
CSCW 2019 Design and Web Chair
Excited to be serving as a Design and Web chair for CSCW 2019, to be held in Austin, Texas, from 9th-13thNovember 2019. Have a look at the website in progress here.
Workshop Participation
I will present my research and have an amazing opportunity to meet some leading female computing-related researchers and professionals at the CRA-W Grad Cohort for Women Workshop in April 2019. :)
October 2018
Patent Published
My conception of Spatial Audio Interface for the visually impaired my Ph.D. internship with Microsoft Research mentor Dr. Manohar Swaminathan has been applied for a patent as "Responsive Spatial Audio Cloud"! Drop a line if you want to know more about my interests and understanding of this research.
CSCW 2018 Design Volunteering
This year, I am a pre-conference student volunteer working on the design of lasting impact, best papers and demo awards. If you are one of the awardees, let me know what you think about the design :). Looking forward to some exciting time in New York next week.
September 2018
UIST 2018 Poster Presentation
Our poster "Pop-up robotics - Facilitating HRI research in public spaces" was presented by my co-author and advisor Dr.Selma Sabanovic, a day before her keynote speech at the conference! Thank you, Selma :)
IDC 2019 Involvement
I am on the organizing committee of ACM 2019 Interaction design and Children (IDC), co-chairing Research and Design Competition, along with Kiley Sobel and Emilie Brulé this year. :) The competition is designed such that research and design challenge is based on ideas developed by child participants for a particular theme.