04-17

Beyond Physical Intelligence: Why Generalist Robots Require Social Intelligence

As the robotics industry moves toward deploying generalist agents in unstructured human environments, such as homes and workplaces, the research focus has largely remained on physical intelligence. While mastering physical tasks is essential, social intelligence is a critical missing piece for widespread technology adoption. To be truly effective, robots must understand, navigate, and manage the nuances of interpersonal interaction.

In this talk, I will discuss two aspects of social intelligence that are fundamental for Human-Robot Interaction (HRI). The first one pertains understanding social phenomena that emerges in group interactions and that robots can potentially leverage to navigate complex social situations. The second one is implicit human feedback, i.e., communicative signals that are given off “for free” by humans and that require interpretation. Robots can leverage such implicit feedback to predict how people perceive them and better collaborate with users.  Finally, I will reflect on how the latest advancements in machine learning are fundamentally reshaping the way we approach research in Human-Robot Interaction.

Bio: Marynel Vázquez is an Assistant Professor in Yale’s Computer Science Department, where she leads the Interactive Machines Group. Her research investigates fundamental problems in Human-Robot Interaction and Artificial Social Intelligence with the ultimate goal of advancing the social competence of robots. Marynel received her bachelor's degree in Computer Engineering from Universidad Simón Bolívar in 2008, and obtained her M.S. and Ph.D. in Robotics from Carnegie Mellon University in 2013 and 2017, respectively. Before joining Yale, she was a collaborator of Disney Research and a Post-Doctoral Scholar at the Stanford Vision & Learning Lab. Marynel received a 2024 AFOSR YIP Award, a 2022 NSF CAREER Award, two Amazon Research Awards, and a Google Research Scholar award. Her work has been recognized with best paper awards at ACM/IEEE HRI 2023 and IEEE RO-MAN 2022 as well as with nominations for paper awards at several other conferences.