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Best Paper Honorable Mention, CHI ’23

Best Demonstration, CSCW ’17.

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Sharing the Sidewalk: Observing Delivery Robot Interactions with Pedestrians during a Pilot in Pittsburgh, PA

Learning When Agents Can Talk to Drivers Using the INAGT Dataset and Multisensor Fusion

A comparative analysis of multimodal communication during design sketching in co-located and distributed environments

Nikolas Martelaro is an Assistant Professor at Carnegie Mellon's Human-Computer Interaction Institute. His lab is dedicated to enhancing designers' abilities through innovative technologies and design methodologies. He is driven by a passion for crafting interactive and intelligent products, and seeks to develop new approaches to support designers in their work. Blending expertise in product design methods, interaction design, human-robot interaction, and mechatronic engineering, he creates tools and methods that empower designers to gain deeper insights into human behavior and ultimately produce more human-centered products. Prior to joining the HCII, he held the position of Digital Experiences Researcher at Accenture Technology Labs in San Francisco. He earned his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford's Center for Design Research under the co-advisorship of Larry Leifer and Wendy Ju.

Interaction with Autonomous Systems

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Interaction Design

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Carnegie Mellon Community Shines at SXSW 2025 — an Intersection of Culture, Tech and Innovation

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A (hypothetical, incremental) revolution in automated transit

Intelligent design platform using digital assistants for design process support

Recommendation engine for design components

Platform for generating interactive experiences at sports venues

Using Technology to Transform Makers into Creative Entrepreneurs

Supporting Designers in Learning to Co-create with AI for Complex Computational Design Tasks

Equitable new mobility: Community-driven mechanisms for designing and evaluating personal delivery device deployments

Assistant Professor

Nikolas Martelaro, assistant professor in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute, in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University, discusses his research in using interactive and autonomous systems to help understand and support designers work.

New Faculty Meet &amp; Greet - Nikolas Martelaro

Talking Robotics #8

Speaker
Nikolas Martelaro, Carnegie Mellon University (US)

Title
Remote User Research for Human-Robot Interaction

Speaker Bio
Nikolas Martelaro is an Assistant Professor at Carnegie Mellon’s Human-Computer Interaction Institute. Martelaro’s lab focuses on augmenting designer’s capabilities through the use of new technology and design methods. Martelaro’s interest in developing new ways to support designers stems from my interest in creating interactive and intelligent products. Martelaro blends a background in product design methods, interaction design, human-robot interaction, and mechatronic engineering to build tools and methods that allow designers to understand people better and to create more human-centered products. Before moving to the HCII, Nikolas Martelaro was a researcher in the Digital Experiences group at the Accenture Technology Labs. Martelaro graduated with a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford’s Center for Design Research where he was co-advised by Larry Leifer and Wendy Ju.

Speaker Links
Personal website: http://nikmartelaro.com/
Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=SNnC2s4AAAAJ&hl=en
GitHub: https://github.com/nikmart

Abstract
COVID-19 has led to decreases in in-person user research. While designers who work on software can shift to using all digital remote research methods, people who work on hardware systems, including robots, are left with limited options. In this talk, I will discuss some ways the robot design teams can do remote user research now and in the future. I will draw on past work in human-computer interaction as well as my own work in creating systems to allow remote design teams to conduct remote observation and interaction prototyping. While things can be challenging for the user researcher team today, I believe that with some creative new methods, we can expand our abilities to do user research for robotics from anywhere in the world.

Chapters
00:00  Presenter Introduction
01:40  Presentation
30:36  Q&A
51:48  End

/////////////////////////////////////////////

Talking Robotics is a series of virtual seminars about Robotics and its interaction with other relevant fields, such as Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Design Research, Human-Robot Interaction, among others. We aim to promote reflections, dialogues, and a place to network.

Organized by Patrícia Alves-Oliveira, Silvia Tulli, Miguel Vasco, and Joana Campos

Email: talkingrobotics at gmail dot com
Web Page: https://talking-robotics.github.io
Twitter: @talkingrobotics

Nikolas Martelaro

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