Bilge Mutlu Department of Computer Sciences, University of Wisconsin-Madison

An interview with me on the social-communicative aspects of Robonaut2, the NASA & GM robot, was featured in MIT’s Technology Review on a February 12, 2010 article:

Another key challenge is enabling Robonaut2 to communicate effectively with astronauts. “This is really a new area,” adds Bilge Mutlu, an assistant professor in computer science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and a member of the human computer interaction lab at CMU. “How does a robot interpret social cues? How does it communicate back? We want robots to be team members, and the new work is a step in that direction.” For the moment, Robonaut2 is limited to communicating with humans in simple ways. For example, when it points its head toward something, it is a cue that the human working alongside the robot should look in that direction.

[Online Article]

Below is a word cloud of keywords from the HRI 2010 Late-Breaking Reports (that I co-chaired with Andrea Thomaz) created using Wordle. [PDF version]

The New Scientist featured my ethnographic work on how robots are used in organizations and how organizational and social factors affect people’s perceptions and adoption of robots in a December 9, 2009 article.
[PDF Article] [Online Article]

I will be teaching a new undergraduate class titled CS-638 Introduction to Human-Computer Interaction in Spring 2010. You can download the course flier here.

I am co-organizing an HCI Reading Group to bring together students and faculty interested in HCI research from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, particularly the Computer Sciences and Industrial and Systems Engineering Departments.