Heather Knight

Heather Knight runs the CHARISMA Robotics research group at Oregon State University. Her previous work includes a postdoc at Stanford University, a PhD in Robotics at Carnegie Mellon University exploring Expressive Motion for Low Degree of Freedom Robots, and M.S. and B.S. degrees in Electrical Engineering & Computer Science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Additional past work include robotics and instrumentation at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, sensor design at Aldebaran Robotics, nine years of producing an annual Robot Film Festival, a robot flower garden installation at the Smithsonian/Cooper-Hewitt Design Museum, robot comedy on TED.com, and a British Video Music Award for OK GO’s “This Too Shall Pass” music video featuring a two-floor Rube Goldberg Machine.

Multi-Robot Expressive Motion by Alexandra Bacula The CHARISMA Lab 2019 and 2021 in Corvallis, OR.

CHARISMA Lab PhD student Alexandra Bacula has been developing systems of features (MoTiS) that can inform the social experience of people by considering how groups of robots move, also integrating performative theater-based evaluations. The Jellyfish (left image) illustrated how groups of robots could invite or exclude human dancers into their collective group. Rudolph the Red-Nosed Robot (right image) involved a choreography of heterogenous robots illustrating the ways in which group motion can both illustrate and reinforce storytelling about robot intent, interaction goal, and personality.