Professor: Andrea Bajcsy (abajcsy [at] cmu [dot] edu)
Office Hours: Tues, 12:20 - 1:20 pm (after class)
Office Hours Location: NSH 4629

Teaching Assistant: Pranay Gupta (pranaygu [at] andrew [dot] cmu [dot] edu)
Office Hours: Mon, 4:00 - 5:00pm
Office Hours Location: NSH 4504

Lecture Time: Tues & Thurs, 11:00 - 12:20 pm
Lecture Location: Wean 4623
Syllabus: PDF
Canvas: https://canvas.cmu.edu/courses/41578

Overview

Human-robot interaction (HRI) is a multidisciplinary field that aims to create successful interactions between people and robots. In this class, we will study algorithmic HRI topics such as mathematical human models, trajectory forecasting, shared autonomy, robot learning from human feedback, active learning, communication, and safety.

This course aims to provide an overview of the state of the art in algorithmic HRI. As such, it will cover a large number of topics, with examples drawn from foundational work and research published in the last five years. The course combines lecture, readings, in-class presentations, written reports, and a final project to engage students with the current challenges and approaches in the field. The course also emphasizes the practice of reading and discussing scientific literature to learn and communicate about the most recent progress in HRI.

News

[11/20/24]
New extended deadline for final project report: Dec 12!
[11/14/24]
Lecture notes 10 uploaded
[10/29/24]
Lecture notes 9 uploaded
[10/10/24]
Lecture notes 8 uploaded
[10/08/24]
Update: Class cancelled on Thur, Nov 7 because Andrea travels to Conference on Robot Learning
[10/08/24]
Lecture notes 7 uploaded
[09/24/24]
Prof. Dylan Losey's guest lecture slides uploaded
[09/23/24]
Consider using the AI Maker Space in Tepper for your projects! Contact Manager: Greg Armstrong (ai-makerspace@cs.cmu.edu)
[09/17/24]
Lecture notes 5 uploaded
[09/05/24]
Lecture notes 4 uploaded
[09/03/24]
Lecture notes 3 uploaded
[09/02/24]
Small updates to the first two week schedule and papers
[08/29/24]
Lecture notes 1 and 2 uploaded
[08/19/24]
New room location: Wean 4623

Schedule (tentative)

Date	Topic	Info
Week 1 Tue, Aug 27	Lecture Introduction	Please check the course syllabus Materials: *Slides*
Week 1 Thurs, Aug 29	Lecture Fundamentals	Single-Agent Decision Making Materials: *Notes*
Week 2 Tue, Sept 3	Lecture Fundamentals	Single-Agent Decision Making (cont'd) Materials: *Notes*
Week 2 Thurs, Sept 5	Lecture Fundamentals	Probability, Bayesian inference Materials: *Notes*
Week 3 Tue, Sept 10	Paper discussion Fundamentals	Required reading: [P1] Goal Inference as Inverse Planning. Baker, et al. (2007) [P2] Planning-based Prediction for Pedestrians. Zeibart, et al. (2009)
Week 3 Thurs, Sept 12	Paper discussion Mathematical Human Models	Required Reading: [P1] Where Do You Think You’re Going?: Inferring Beliefs about Dynamics from Behavior. Reddy, et al. (2018) [P2] LESS is More: Rethinking Probabilistic Models of Human Behavior. Bobu, et al. (2020)
Week 4 Tue, Sept 17	Lecture Trajectory Forecasting	Planning-based & learning-based; applications in manipulation, navigation Materials: *Notes* *Slides (project examples)*
Week 4 Thurs, Sept 19	Paper discussion Trajectory Forecasting	Required reading: [P1] Probabilistically Safe Robot Planning with Confidence-Based Human Predictions. Bajcsy, et al. (2018) [P2] ManiCast: Collaborative Manipulation with Cost-Aware Human Forecasting. Kedia, et al. (2023)
Week 5 Tues, Sept 24	Guest Lecture Shared Autonomy	Due Project Proposal Dylan Losey (Prof @ Virginia Tech) Materials: *Slides*
Week 5 Thurs, Sept 26	Paper discussion Shared Autonomy	Required reading: [P1] Shared Autonomy via Hindsight Optimization. Javdani, et al. (2015) [P2] LILA: Language-Informed Latent Actions. Karamcheti, et al. (2021)
Week 6 Tue, Oct 1	Lecture Experimental Design	Designing and conducting user studies Materials: *Slides*
Week 6 Thurs, Oct 3	Paper discussion Experimental Design	Required Reading: [P1] Review of Human Studies Methods in HRI and Recommendations. Bethel & Murphy (2010) [P2] Feel the Bite: Robot-Assisted Inside-Mouth Bite Transfer using Robust Mouth Perception and Physical Interaction-Aware Control. Jenamani, et al. (2024) [P3] Independence in the Home: A Wearable Interface for a Person with Qadriplegia to Teleoperate a Mobile Manipulator. Padmanabha, et al. (2024)
Week 7 Tue, Oct 8	Lecture Research Skills: Figures & Visuals	Due Homework What makes a visual or plot "good"? Is there a process we can follow? Further Reading: An Optimal Control Approach to Graphic Design. Bajcsy (2023) Materials: *Slides*
Week 7 Thurs, Oct 10	Lecture Research Skills: Technical Writing	What is good technical writing? How can we become better writers? Materials: *Slides*
Week 8 Tue, Oct 15	No Class (Fall Break)
Week 8 Thurs, Oct 17	No Class (Fall Break)
Week 9 Tue, Oct 22	Guest Lecture Robot Learning from Human Feedback	Tesca Fitzgerald (Prof @ Yale)
Week 9 Thurs, Oct 24	Paper discussion Robot Learning from Human Feedback	Required Reading: [P1] Learning Robot Objectives from Physical Human Interaction. Bajcsy et al. (2018) [P2] Correcting Robot Plans with Natural Language Feedback. Sharma et al. (2022) [P3] Gesture-Informed Robot Assistance via Foundation Models. Lin, et al. (2023)
Week 10 Tue, Oct 29	Guest Lecture Active Learning (Michelle Zhao)	Due Mid-term Report Information gain, Asking questions Materials: *Slides*
Week 10 Thurs, Oct 31	Paper discussion Active Learning	Required Reading: [P1] Asking Easy Questions: A User-Friendly Approach to Active Reward Learning. Biyik, et al. (2019) [P2] INQUIRE: INteractive Querying for User-aware Informative REasoning. Fitzgerald et al. (2023)
Week 11 Tue, Nov 5	No Class (Democracy Day)
Week 11 Thur, Nov 7	No Class (Andrea at CoRL)
Week 12 Tue, Nov 12	Paper discussion Communication	Required Reading: [P1] Designing robot learners that ask good questions. Cakmak & Thomaz (2012) [P2] Expressing Robot Incapability. Huang, et al. (2018) [P3] Planning with Verbal Communication for Human-Robot Collaboration. Nikolaidis, et al. (2018)
Week 12 Thur, Nov 14	Guest Lecture HRI as a Game (Lasse Peters)	Influence-aware planning Materials: *Slides*
Week 13 Tue, Nov 19	Paper discussion HRI as a Game	Required Reading: [P1] Towards Robots that Influence Humans over Long-Term Interaction. Sagheb, et al. (2023) [P2] Planning for Autonomous Cars that Leverage Effects on Human Actions. Sadigh, et al. (2018)
Week 13 Thurs, Nov 21	Lecture Safety & Uncertainty Quantification	Decision-theoretic & statistical safety for HRI
Week 14 Tue, Nov 26	Paper discussion Safety & Uncertainty Quantification	Required Reading: [P1] Robots That Suggest Safe Alternatives. Jeong & Bajcsy. (2024) [P2] Robots That Ask For Help: Uncertainty Alignment for Large Language Model Planners. Ren, et al. (2023)
Week 14 Thurs, Nov 28	No Class (Thanksgiving)
Week 15 Tue, Dec 3	Final presentations	Due Slides uploaded to Canvas Dec. 2, 11:59pm ET Presenters: [Allison Chu, Cherry Bhatt, Sheen Cao], Yizhuo (Ethan) Di, Haoze He, [Louis Plottel, Yingxin Zhang], Will Heitman, Jasmine Kim
Week 15 Thurs, Dec 5	Final presentations	Presenters: [Lyuxing He, Lingkan Wang], Ellen Lee, Taiming Zhang, Arthur Fender Bucker, Diana Frias Franco
Week 16 Tue, Dec 10	No Class (Final Exams)
Week 16 Thurs, Dec 12	No Class (Final Exams)	Due Final report uploaded to Canvas by Dec 12, 11:59pm ET