Julie A. Adams

Professor
Oregon State University
Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences


Contact:

Email: heather.knight@oregonstate.edu

Phone: (TBD)

Address: Electrical Engineering and Computer Science KEC 2072 Oregon State University Corvallis, OR 97331-6001

Website: (TBD)

Bio

Dr. Heather Knight is an assistant professor in Computer Science and Robotics at Oregon State University. There, her CHARISMA research group uses methods from Entertainment to bootstrap the development of Social Robots. 

Her academic background includes a postdoc at Stanford University, a PhD in Robotics at Carnegie Mellon University exploring Expressive Motion for Low Degree of Freedom Robots, and a M.S. and B.S. in Electrical Engineering & Computer Science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology,  developing a sensate skin for a robot teddy bear at the MIT Media Lab. Additional past work includes: instrumentation at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and sensor design at Aldebaran Robotics.

Outside OSU, she runs Marilyn Monrobot, a robot theater company featuring robot comedy performances and the annual Robot Film Festival. 


Research Interest 

  • Minimal Social Robots
  • Multi-Robot Multi-Human Social Interaction
  • Entertainment Robotics

Current, Recent, and Upcoming HCD Courses

ROB 599 – Social Robotics – 4 Credits - Fall 2017


CHARISMA Robotics: Graf Hall 

Location: Graf Hall
Phone Number: (TBD)
Website: (TBD)
Research Equipment and Software: 

  • Robotic ChairsPioneer robots
  • Nao robot
  • OTTO 100 robot
  • Soft-social robots

Current Projects

  • Expressive Motion for minimal and legged robots
  • Multi-Robot Multi-Human Social Interaction with Robotic Furniture
  • Ethnographic research with Clearpath Factory Robots
  • Collision-OK robots

Selected Publications

  • Knight, H., Lee, T., Hallawell, B., and Ju, W. “I Get It Already! The Influence of ChairBot Motion Gestures on Bystander Response.” International Conference on Robot and Human Communication (Ro-Man ‘17), 2017.  
  • Knight, H., and Simmons, R. “An Intelligent Design Interface for Dancers to Teach Robots.” International Conference on Robot and Human Communication (Ro-Man ‘17), 2017.  
  • Knight, H., Thielstrom, R., and Simmons, R. “Expressive Path Shape (Swagger): Simple Features that Illustrate a Mobile Robot’s Attitude Toward its Goal .” International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS ‘16), 2016.  
  • Knight, H and Simmons, R. “Expressive Motion with X, Y and Theta: Laban Effort Features for Mobile Robots.” In Proceedings of International Symposium Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN ‘14), August 2014 in Edinburgh, Scotland.  
  • Knight, H. “Eight Lessons learned about Non-verbal Interactions through Robot Theater.” Social Robotics.Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2011. 42-51.
  • Knight, H., Divvala, S. and Satkin, S. “A Savvy Robot Standup Comic: Realtime Learning through Audience Tracking” Work-in-progress paper for the International Conference on Tangible and Embedded Interaction(TEI ’11), January 2011, in Funchal, Portugal.  
  • Knight, H., Toscano, R., Steele, W. D., Chang, A., Wang, Y. and Breazeal, C. “Real-time Touch Gesture Recognition for a Sensate Robot.” In Proceedings of International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS ’09), October 2009 in St. Louis, Missouri.