What are the expectations of older adults from companion robots? How can we apply foundation models to meet those expectations? What are the challenges of integrating LLMs in conversational robots? How can we detect user enjoyment in conversations with multimodal/textual LLMs? What are the privacy concerns with conversational robots? How can we improve turn-taking in HRI?
Personalisation through incremental and online learning of users' appearances, their behaviours and preferences in customer-oriented service and socially assistive robotics domains.
Personalised motion and placement planning was designed for loading a dishwasher using a custom robot arm within simulation and real-world contexts.
Designing motions for getting up on falls, various kicks and goalie motions (2014), and behaviour planning for technical challenges, such as whistle detection and realistic environments (2015).
Design and assembly of the chassis and mechanical parts of autonomous educational mobile robots.
From emotionally adaptive virtual agent, personalised narrator robot and tracked robots to organising workshops, I like being involved in various projects.
ABOUT ME
Creating personal robots
with lifelong learning
for long-lasting interactions
that meet your expectations
Ever since I was young, I dreamed of building personal robots that can learn and adapt to help us in our daily lives. Here I am, a roboticist (PhD), computer engineer (MSc), mechanical engineer (BSc), and a Postdoc and Digital Futures fellow at KTH Royal Institute of Technology. And this is my story with robots…
NEWS
MARCH 2025
Extremely happy to receive the Best Paper Award from Frontiers in Robotics and AI journal! It was selected as one of the 11 best papers out of 261 published in robotics last year. The paper explores what older adults expect from conversational companion robots and provides actionable recommendations on how foundation models can help meet those expectations. Check the paper here. Watch my talk on the paper. Editor's Picks 2024 e-Book featuring our paper with the other best papers is here.
MARCH 2025
Thrilled to receive the Best Paper Award in the Systems track at the International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI 2025) with Gabriel Skantze for our work on turn-taking in conversational HRI! Check the paper here.
MARCH 2025
Ruben Janssens, a PhD student at Ghent University that I co-supervise with Tony Belpaeme, André Pereira, and Gabriel Skantze, presented our work on using LLMs for user enjoyment prediction in conversations to enable adaptive interactions, based on our HRI Conversational User Enjoyment Scale at HRI 2025! Check the paper here.
MARCH 2025
Gave a keynote on "Long-Term Human-Robot Interaction in the Real World: Aligning Robots to Expectations" at the Human-Robot Interaction in Extreme and Challenging Environments (Exacting) workshop at HRI 2025, discussing practical lessons learned from the 2.5-year deployment of robots in a hospital, with recommendations for integrating foundation models to create long-term companions. Watch the talk here.
MARCH 2025
Coordinated the fifth edition of the "Lifelong Learning and Personalization in Long-Term Human-Robot Interaction (LEAP-HRI)" workshop with fantastic speakers and debaters at HRI 2025. Over 40 participants joined us in person and online, making it the most popular workshop at HRI for the fifth year in a row. Stay tuned for the recording!
MARCH 2025
Happy to be part of the Organization Committee as the Publicity and Web Co-Chair for the International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI 2026) in Edinburgh!
NOVEMBER 2024
Gave a keynote at the 2nd International Symposium on Humans at the Centre of HRI by NAVER LABS Europe on "Conversational Robots with Large Language Models".
AUGUST 2024
Panelist at two workshops at the 33rd IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN): "Large Language Models in the RoMan Age: Exploring Social Impact and Implications for Design and Ethics", alongside Kim Malfacini (OpenAI), Stefan Larsson (Lund University), Yoon Kyung Lee (Seoul National University), and Alva Markelius (University of Cambridge), and "Weighing the Benefits of Autonomous Robot persoNalisation (WARN)", alongside Guillem Alenya (IRI), Wing-Yue Geoffrey Louie (Oakland University) and Ryan Calo (University of Washington).
MAY 2024
Presented my postdoctoral work on "Large Language Models in Conversational Robots for Older Adults: Challenges and Recommendations" at KTH, covering expectations of older adults from companion robots, applying foundation models to conversational robots, challenges of LLMs, detecting user enjoyment in conversations by humans and multimodal/textual LLMs.
MAY 2024
Journal paper on "Recommendations for Designing Conversational Companion Robots with Older Adults through Foundation Models" is published at the Frontiers in Robotics and AI.
MAY 2024
Released our Human-Robot Interaction Conversational User Enjoyment Scale (HRI CUES) and the corresponding dataset to provide tools for measuring user enjoyment from an external perspective to supplement self-reported user enjoyment responses in HRI research.
MARCH 2024
Panelist on robot learning alongside Carolina Parada (Google DeepMind), Dan Grollman (Plus One Robotics), and Tesca Fitzgerald (Yale University) at the Technological Advances in Human-Robot Interaction (TAHRI) symposium. Over 100 researchers attended the panel with discussions on robot failures in the real world, challenges of large language models, and cognition.
MARCH 2024
Coordinated and co-organised the fourth edition of the "Lifelong Learning and Personalization in Long-Term Human-Robot Interaction (LEAP-HRI)" workshop with amazing speakers, paper presentations, and an intense debate at the International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI 2024). Over 50 researchers joined us in person and online, making it the most popular workshop at HRI for the fourth year in a row. If you missed it, you can watch the recording and learn more about lifelong learning from the proceedings.
FEBRUARY 2024
Thrilled to receive the SIGCHI Gary Marsden travel award for coordinating the 4th workshop on Lifelong Learning and Personalization in Long-Term Human-Robot Interaction (LEAP-HRI) at the International Conference on Human Robot Interaction (HRI) in Boulder, CO.
SEPTEMBER 2023
Gave a keynote on integrating large language models to conversational robots for older adults at International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) at the Geriatronics: AI and Robotics for Health & Well-Being in Older Age workshop with 50+ attendees! Check the pre-print here.
SEPTEMBER 2023
Happy to be part of the Program Committee of the International Symposium on Technological Advances in Human-Robot Interaction.
JULY 2023
Happy to be invited to the Program Committee of the International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) for the research on Longitudinal and Case Studies.
JUNE 2023
Moderated the 5th Furhat Conference on Social Robotics on "How Large Language Models are Redefining Social Robotics". Over 200 participants joined online for 2 hours to hear from 4 excellent speakers on the opportunities and risks of generative AI.
APRIL 2023
Presented my current and previous work on "Personal Robots in the Wild" as a Deep Dive Talk at KTH Digital Futures.
APRIL 2023
Presented my postdoctoral work on Personalized Companion Robot for Open-Domain Dialogue in Long-Term Elderly Care at Digital Futures Open Research Days.
MARCH 2023
Coordinated and co-organised the third edition of the "Lifelong Learning and Personalization in Long-Term Human-Robot Interaction (LEAP-HRI)" workshop with fantastic speakers and debaters at the International Conference on Human Robot Interaction (HRI 2023). Over 80 participants joined us in person and online, making it the most popular workshop at HRI for the third year in a row. If you missed it, you can watch the recording and delve deeper into the explored topics in the proceedings.
MARCH 2023
Co-organised "Human-Robot Conversational Interaction" workshop at the International Conference on Human Robot Interaction (HRI 2023). With over 40 attendees, an insightful keynote and 12 great presentations from early-stage researchers, the workshop was a huge success! You can read more about the presented work here.
NOVEMBER 2022
Presented my prior and current work as an invited speaker at the Workshop on Robotic Failures in Health and Social Care and Swedish Dialogue Workshop.
OCTOBER 2022
Presented my postdoctoral research on "Personalized Companion Robot for Open Domain Dialogue in Long-Term Elderly Care" at the Digitalize in Stockholm conference. Video of the presentation is available here.
september 2022
Co-organised a special session on "Short- and Long-Term Personalisation in Human-Robot Interaction" and the 6th Workshop on Behavior Adaptation and Learning for Assistive Robotics at the 31st IEEE International Conference on Robot & Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN 2022).
JUNE 2022
Joined KTH Royal Institute of Technology as a Postdoctoral Researcher with a Digital Futures fellowship! I will be working with Gabriel Skantze and Sanna Kuoppamäki on creating a personal companion robot with lifelong learning for open-domain dialogue in long-term elderly care.
