Current Research

Dr. Robin R. Murphy

Research interests are artificial intelligence as applied to emergency informatics, especially tactical land, sea, and air vehicles. Specific topics are: human-robot interaction, heterogeneous teams, victim management, and perceptual directed behavior-based control.

Active projects

Air Joey. In this project, a AirRobot quad robot will autonomously launch, coordinate with, and dock with a ground robot. This project addresses fundamental research in heterogenous teams and behavior-based control. Funded by Lockheed-Martin.

A Midsummer's Night Dream. This project is a collaboration with the Theater Department at Texas A&M. We are applying our work in affect and behavior-based control of small UAVs to create robot sprites for the upcoming staging of Shakespeare's classic play.

Survivor Buddy/The Social Medium is the Message (with Prof. Cliff Nass, Stanford Communication between Humans and Interactive Media (CHIMe) Lab and Prof. Takis Zourntos, ECE Texas A&M). This project is creating a multi-media "head" for a rescue robot to serve as the interface between a trapped victim and the rest of the world for the 10 or more hours it will take to extract them. The dependency on a robot poses major questions in human-robot interaction and affective expression. Funded by Microsoft, National Science Foundation.