Welcome to the webpage of Human-Centered AI and Robotics (HCAIR) Group! We are part of the Department of Computer Science at Rice University, and are located in Anne and Charles Duncan Hall at the George R. Brown School of Engineering.

We envision a future where AI systems support humans as assistants, teammates, and even trainers. We are interested in developing computational foundations of these interactive AI systems that enhance human capability. To develop these foundations, our research methodology involves developing machine learning and decision-making algorithms, prototyping them on interactive AI systems (such as robots and recommender systems), and evaluating them with human users.

We believe that to arrive at the computational foundations of interactive AI systems, it is essential to adopt a cross-disciplinary perspective and ground research in both near-term and futuristic applications. In our ongoing work, we are exploring applications of Human-AI Collaboration in healthcare and disaster response. We are fortunate to have collaborators with deep expertise in psychology, physiological sensing, team science and medicine. By merging our computational contributions with domain expertise of our collaborators, we are developing solutions to model human behavior, train teams of humans and robots, and explain behavior of AI systems.

Director: Vaibhav Unhelkar, Assistant Professor of Computer Science, Rice University

Research Areas: Human-Robot Interaction, Interactive Machine Learning, and Explainable AI.