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Group Members
Our members are people with expertise in areas of robotics, artificial intelligence, computer science, mathematics, biology, and engineering, and students heading that way.
The Centre for Computer Science and Informatics Research has recently been restructured and many of our members have been previously affiliated with the Adaptive Systems Research Group.
Academic staff
Prof. Farshid Amirabdollahian
Professor (Human-Robot Interaction)
Contact information
f.amirabdollahian2@herts.ac.uk
Research Profile
Personal Profile
Robot House, Kaspar
Research interests
Rehabilitation Robotics, Assistive Robotics, Technology to Support Ageing and Wellbeing, Safety of Robots, Ethical Robotics, Haptic Feedback, Physiological Sensing and Machine Learning, Agricultural Robotics, Robots for Education
I am a professor of Human-Robot Interaction at the School of Engineering and Computer Science, the University of Hertfordshire. I am currently director of the Robotics Research Group but also I direct Robot House and Kaspar projects.
I am the University Theme Champion in Information and Security. I coordinated and completed the Accompany and SCRIPT projects funded by the framework 7 programme of the European Community.
My research is focused on human-robot interaction and is applied in the context of rehabilitation, assistive technology and more recently, over the past 7 years, takes an interest on deep learning and machine learning approaches for HRI.
Recent Projects
Hospital@home, SWAG, EMERGENCE, AutoQGen, Kaspar and language, Kaspar Explains, CuPick, Robot House 2.0
Dr Diego R. Faria
Reader (Robotics and Intelligent Adaptive Systems)
Contact information
Research interests
Cognitive Robotics, Affective Robotics, Artificial Perception, Assistive Tech, Applied Machine Learning, Brain-Computer Interfaces
Dr Diego R. Faria is a Reader in Robotics and Intelligent Adaptive Systems at the School of Physics, Engineering and Computer Science of University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield, UK. He is the head of the CoPERAS Lab (Cognitive, Perception and Emotion for Robotics and Autonomous Systems). From Jul/2016 to Mar/2022 he was a Lecturer and Senior Lecturer at Aston University, Birmingham, UK. Dr Diego R. Faria has coordinated multiples scientific projects in partnership with several European Universities and EU / British Companies, summing up over £3M, funded by the European Commission, UK national funding agencies (EPSRC, Royal Society, Newton Fund and Innovate-UK), the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technolgy, IEEE RAS-SIGHT and the Brazilian agency CONFAP / Araucaria Foundation. The projects are related to Assistive Technology, Cognitive Robotics, Brain-Computer Interfaces, Artificial Perception, AI and Machine Learning applied to multiple contexts, including social and affective robotics, autonomous vehicles and adaptive intelligent systems. From 2014 to 2016, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute of Systems and Robotics, Portugal, where he collaborated on several projects funded by the European Commission and the Portuguese government in the areas of Robotics, AI, and Assistive Technology. He received his Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering (Cognitive Robotics) from the University of Coimbra, Portugal, in 2014. He holds a MSc. degree in Computer Science from the Federal University of Paraná (UFPR), Brazil in 2005. In 2001 he obtained a B.Tech. degree in Informatics Technology (data computing), and a specialization (PGDip) in Computer Science, State University of Londrina (UEL) in 2002. He is reviewer of the most important Robotics conferences world-wide and the highest impact journals in the field of Robotics, Pattern Recognition, Brain-Computer Interfaces, and Applied Machine Learning. He has published several scientific papers in high impact journals and international conferences available at http://shorturl.at/dlos6
Recent Projects
Dr Gabriella Lakatos
Reader (Social and Etho-Robotics)
Contact information
Research interests
Human-Robot Interactions, Social and Assistive Robotics, Acceptable and believable robotic behaviour and interactions, Etho-Robotics
Gabriella is a Reader at the School of Physics, Engineering and Computer Science of the University of Hertfordshire. She completed her PhD in the field of Ethology analyzing Human-Dog Interactions, after which she transferred her skills to the field of human-robot interactions. Gabriella has extensive experience in the fields of human-robot interactions and robot-assisted therapy for children with autism. She participated in several large-scale European projects such as LIREC and BabyRobot, as well as in the EPSRC funded project Trustworthy Robotic Assistants. More recently, she has also been involved as a CoI of the UKRI TAS hub's pump priming round one project Kaspar explains, the EPSRC Network+ project EMERGENCE, the EU ERASMUS+ EMBOA project, and the Kaspar for Speech and Language Therapy project funded by the Baily Thomas Charitable Fund.
Recent Projects
Hospital@home, SWAG, EMERGENCE, EMBOA, Kaspar and language, Kaspar Explains
Dr Catherine Menon
Principal Lecturer
Contact information
Research interests
ethics of autonomous systems; safety, ethics and trust in critical systems; ethical hazard analysis of AI systems
Dr Catherine Menon is a principal lecturer within the robotics research group. Her research focuses on the intersection between safety and ethics in autonomous systems. She was PI on the AAIP funded feasibility project Assuring safety and social credibility and is a Co-I on the Robotics Standard Expert Review project, funded by the Emergence network She is a member of the BSI AMT/10 and AMT/10/1 Committees, providing UK input into ISO/TC 299 (standardisation in robotics) and BS 8611 (ethical design and application of robotic devices).
Dr Luke Wood
Principal Lecturer (Artificial Intelligence and Robotics)
Contact information
Research interests
3D printing, Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), Artificial Intelligence (AI), Rehabilitation Robotics, Robots in Therapy and Education, Assistive Robotics, Social Robotics.
Recent Projects
Dr Frank Förster
Senior Lecturer
Contact information
Research interests
human-robot interaction, robotic language acquisition, pragmatics, spoken dialogue systems, human-centric AI
Recent Projects
Dr Patrick Holthaus
Senior Research Fellow (Robot House Manager)
Contact information
p.holthaus@herts.ac.uk
Research Profile
Personal Website
Robot House
Research interests
Social robotics: nonverbal interactive signals; social credibility and trust in assistive and companion robots; interaction architectures and behaviour coordination; systems integration in heterogeneous environments
As the manager of Robot House, Patrick coordinates all research activities inside the house, supports internal and external collaborators in using the facilities, and advises them while conducting research. At the same time, he maintains the robots and all the other interactive technology in the house. Patrick has extensive expertise in social human-robot interaction and experimentation and is highly skilled with a large array of robotic and sensing technologies.
He is also a supervisor of several PhD students and a Visiting Lecturer at the School of Physics, Engineering and Computer Science, teaching advanced research topics in computer science and other modules.
Patrick is currently a CoI of the UKRI TAS hub's pump priming project Kaspar explains and an advisory board member of the Norwegian project Human Interactive Robotics in Healthcare (HIRo). He was also a CoI of the AAIP funded feasibility project Assuring safety and social credibility. Previously, he been a postdoctoral researcher in the Robot House 2.0 project, an EPSRC strategic equipment grant, and in the Cognitive Service Robotics Apartment, a large-scale project within the DFG-funded excellence cluster CITEC where he was a member of the Cognitive Systems Engineering group.
Recent Projects
Hospital@home, SWAG, FLUIDITY, EMERGENCE, EMBOA, Kaspar Explains, Robot House 2.0, SocCred
Dr Kheng Lee Koay
Senior Lecturer (Scientific Manager of Robot House)
Contact information
Research interests
human-robot interaction, social robotics, robotic home companions, agent migration and mobile robotics
Recent Projects
Sílvia Moros Español
Senior Lecturer
Contact information
Research interests
Human-Robot Interaction, Social Robotics, Assistive Robotics
Sílvia is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Hertfordshire. She received an Industrial Engineering degree at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC), a PAIR Master degree in Automated Production and Robotics at the Fundació CIM - UPC and a Robotics and Automation Master degree at the Universidad Carlos III in Madrid. She also received a Psychology degree at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC). She was previously part of the now finished EU Horizon2020 BabyRobot project. Her research interests include social robotics, Human-Robot Interaction and design of robotic behaviours for children with autism.
Recent Projects
Dr Ben Robins
Senior Research Fellow
Contact information
b.robins@herts.ac.uk
Research Profile
Personal Website
Kaspar
Research interests
Human Robot Interaction (HRI) with specific interest in the application of robotic systems in rehabilitation, therapy and education; Autism therapy; Dance Movement Therapy
Recent Projects
Dr Abolfazl Zaraki
Senior Lecturer (Robotics)
Contact information
Research interests
Mutual behaviour adaptation in Human-robot Interactions, Contextual reasoning, Development of Cognitive Systems for Autonomous robots, Social Robotics
Dr Abolfazl Zaraki is Senior Lecturer in Robotics at the Computer Science department of the University of Hertfordshire. Before joining UH, he was a lecturer at the School of Engineering and a member of the Research Centre in AI, Robotics and Human-Machine Systems (IROHMS) at Cardiff University, Cardiff. He was the Co-chair of the Human-Like Artificial Intelligence (AI) working group and a member of the IROHMS leadership team.
He received a master's degree in mechatronics and automatic control engineering from University Technology Malaysia, Malaysia, in 2010, and a PhD degree in automatic robotic and bioengineering from the University of Pisa, Italy, in 2014. Between 2014 and 2019, he worked as Research Fellow/Senior Research Fellow at different research institutions in Italy and the UK.
In the past, Abolfazl worked on European projects EASEL (Expressive Agents for Symbiotic Education and Learning), BabyRobot - NextGen Social Robotics, JAMES (Joint Action for Multimodal Embodied Social Systems) and an Innovate UK funded project Piglet - Snake Robot Solution for Inspection in collaboration with industry.
Abolfazl's research interests include developing autonomous systems for social and industrial robotic platforms, trusted autonomy, closed-loop Human-Robot Interaction studies, and brain-computer interface (BCI) for research and assistive applications.
Research staff
Dr Shadiya Alingal Meethal
Research Fellow (Human-Robot Interaction)
Contact information
Research interests
Signal Processing, Machine learning, Robotic Rehabilitation
Recent Projects
Dr Vignesh Velmurugan
Research Fellow (Educational Robotics Companion)
Contact information
Research interests
Rehabilitation robotics, Motor learning, Human-robot interaction in assistive and social robotics, Educational robotic companions, Humanoid robots, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
In his current role as a post-doctoral research fellow, Dr. Vignesh Velmurugan focuses on research within the Kaspar project, involving the development of robotic companions for educational purposes. He earned his PhD from the University of Hertfordshire, concentrating on rehabilitation robotics for stroke survivors, and continues to explore this area of study. Additionally, he holds master's degrees in robotics from Ecole Centrale de Nantes and Warsaw University of Technology.
Dr Mohamad Reza Shahabian Alashti
Research Fellow (Robotics and Deep Learning)
Contact information
Research interests
Robotics, Mechatronics, Human-Robot Interaction, Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Machine Vision, Human Activity Recognition
Dr. Mohamad Reza Shahabian Alashti is currently a postdoctoral research fellow, focusing on the SWAG project, a multidisciplinary initiative in soft robotics dedicated to developing lower limb exosuits. He earned his PhD from the University of Hertfordshire, specializing in Human Activity Recognition in Ambient Assisted Living Scenarios, a field he continues to explore. In addition, he holds a master's degree in Mechatronics Engineering from Qazvin Azad University (QIAU) and was an active member of the At Home Research Laboratory at the SYNTECH Technology and Innovation Center.
Research students
Ali Fallahi
Contact information
Research interests
Human Robot Interaction (HRI), Social and Assistive Robotics, Acceptable and Believable Robotic Behaviour and Interactions, Machine Learning
Ali is a PhD student at the School of Physics, Engineering and Computer Science of the University of Hertfordshire. His research focuses on human-robot interaction, with the objective of trust between robots and humans.
Avoiding over-trust and lack of trust are noteworthy challenges in HRI. There are various aspects which should be considered to balance the level of trust, and that is what makes this field significantly special and impressive.
Gayathri Girija Devi Radhakrishnan
Ph.D. Student
Contact information
Research interests
Robotics, Human-Robot Interaction, Social Robotics
Khashayar Ghamati Ghamsari
Ph.D. Student
Contact information
Research interests
Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), Reinforcement Learning (RL), Large Language Model (LLM)
Khashayar is a PhD candidate researching robot adaptation in unseen environments through Reinforcement Learning (RL). His work centres on developing adaptive algorithms that enable robots to learn autonomously and perform effectively in unfamiliar, dynamic conditions.
Sehrish Rafique
Ph.D. Student
Contact information
Research interests
Robotics, Context Aware Computing, Human-Robot Interaction, Ubiquitous Computing, Smart Sensing, Human Activity Recognition
Lewis Riches
Ph.D. Student
Contact information
Research interests
Robotics, Human-Robot interaction, Companion robotics, Social robotics, Planning
Past academics
Dr Hooman SamaniDr Prapa Rattadilok
Past research students
Dr Vignesh VelmuruganDr Shadiya Alingal Meethal
Dr Mubashir Ahmad
Dr Mohammad Hossein Bamorovat Abadi
The past members sections only includes alumni of the new robotics research group. To see alumni of the adaptive systems research group, please visit their website.