Princeton Robotics Seminar - Patricia Alves Oliveira
Patricia Alves Oliveira, a robotics professor at the University of Michigan, presents work on designing social robots with people across education, mental health, assistive dining, pediatric care, and art, at Princeton University’s robotics seminar.
In this talk
- 1:35
Designing robots around people
Oliveira describes an iterative approach that combines human-centered design, robot development, and evaluation with intended users. Her interdisciplinary Michigan lab works with students across engineering, psychology, architecture, and art. She argues that involving people early helps shape both a robot’s behavior and its physical form.
- 6:55
YOLO supports creative play
Oliveira designed YOLO, a mobile robot for children’s storytelling, using a design process that involved about 142 children before the robot was built. In a study with 62 children, storytelling improved verbal creativity across all conditions, while stories made with an active robot scored higher in originality than stories made with the inactive robot. Children’s movement patterns also informed the robot’s expressive behaviors.
- 32:40
A robot for teen mental health
EMAR adapts exercises from dialectical behavior therapy into brief conversations with a robot, developed with clinicians and shaped by teenagers’ ideas about the robot’s character and language. In a two-week home study with 19 teens, participants reported greater engagement with the robot than with a workbook, and some used it to build daily routines. Oliveira notes that a deliberately limited understanding of users may help protect privacy and reduce feelings of judgment.
- 42:57
Making assistive feeding social
Oliveira’s feeding research focuses on how robotic assistance affects conversation and control during shared meals. A disabled community researcher helped shape interviews and design recommendations, including giving users more control and keeping the robot visually unobtrusive. Participants also used an accessible storyboarding tool to describe desired moments beyond eating, such as getting help with a restaurant menu or paying.
- 53:50
Robots for clinical care and art
Oliveira’s team is developing a character for a robotic eye scanner that can track a child’s face, with the goal of making pediatric exams more engaging; clinic testing is still planned. In another project, researchers track artists’ biometrics and brush movements while they paint, exploring whether those signals can help authenticate how a work was made.
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