Two students live with man with quadriplegia to perfect their robotic interface

Henry plays poker with his wife, Jane, using an interface developed by CMU students to control a robot. — Photos: Carnegie Mellon University/TNS

IT STARTED as a theoretical class project to improve the use of robots in a healthcare setting. It ended in a trip to California for two Carnegie Mellon students, who lived with a man with quadriplegia for a week as they tested and perfected their robotic interface.

Akhil Padmanabha, a third-year robotics PhD student, and Janavi Gupta, a computer science major, began working on the technology in mid-2022 and early 2023, respectively. The project, called Head-Worn Assisted Teleoperation, or HAT, allows users to control a robot using the tilt of their head or voice recognition, rather than strictly handheld controls.