Lixiao (Sean) Zhu

lixiao.zhu[at]mail.mcgill.ca

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About

I am a PhD candidate at McGill University, where I am researching the influence of collaborative robots on human behavior in human-robot interaction (HRI). I have a Master's degree in Computer Science from the Colorado School of Mines and have a strong background in programming and technology. My research involves developing a quantitative model to measure the change in human movements during collaborative tasks with robots, using the phenomenon of entrainment as a basis. My work encompasses a range of areas including HRI, human perception of robots, and robot ethics. In addition to my studies and work, I have a passion for building PCs and enjoy staying up-to-date with the latest advancements in technology. Through my studies and interests, I hope to contribute to the advancement of robotics and deepen our understanding of the interaction between humans and robots.  For more information about me, please visit my personal website.

Projects

Quantifying Robot Influence on Humans: The research aims to develop a quantitative model of a collaborative robot’s influence on human behaviours in dyadic HRI. The entrainment effect is leveraged. Entrainment is an adaptive human behaviour where people voluntarily or involuntarily synchronize their movements to the environment. With a full understanding of how entrainment effects impact the robot's influence on human behaviours and human perception of a robot in short-term human-robot interaction, a mathematical model will be trained to quantify the robot's influence on human motions. In other words, the model will be trained based on the collected human motions to quantitive measure the change in participants’ movement for a collaborative task between humans and robots. The work is the first work to allow robotics researchers to dynamically measure robot's influence on human behaviours based on the entrainment effect. The project involves the areas of human-robot interaction, human perception of robots, robot planning, machine learning, and robot ethics.

Publications