Anca Dragan

Anca Dragan is an Assistant Professor in EECS at UC Berkeley, where she runs the InterACT lab. Her goal is to enable robots to work with, around, and in support of people. She works on algorithms for a) coordinating with people in shared spaces, and b) learning what people want the robot to do in the first place. She is also a Staff Research Scientist at Waymo, where she advises the Behavior team, who is responsible for prediction and planning. Anca did her Ph.D. in the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University on legible motion planning. At Berkeley, she helped found the Berkeley AI Research Lab, is a co-PI for the Center for Human-Compatible AI. Anca has been honored by the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), the Sloan Fellowship, the NSF CAREER award, ONR YIP, IEEE RAS Early Career Award, the Okawa award, MIT’s TR35, and an IJCAI Early Career Spotlight.

A biped robot moves to its goal location differently in response to its user. It reacts with a slouched slower motion when the user had a bad day, and with an energetic hop when the user is excited.