HMC Expert: Jim Boerkoel

Jim Boerkoel, PhD, specializes in human robot interaction, artificial intelligence, and interaction design—designing better human computer interactions.Boerkoel directs the Human Experience & Agent Teamwork Lab. The goal of the HEATLab is to develop techniques that augment humans’ own cognitive and physical abilities to create integrated human-agent teams that are more capable than their individual counterparts. The HEATLab’s current projects include Productivity and Wellness Pal (PaWPal), which explores whether an agent (smartphone app) can learn and visualize trends about the experiences of its human teammate in order to nudge them towards behavior that optimizes their productivity and wellness; Robot Brunch, which explores what it takes for multiple robots to schedule robust interactions in the messiness of the real world; and Human Robot Conavigation, which explores how to plan and schedule robots’ interactions with humans on shared activities so that the exchanges are fluid and intuitive.

Prior to joining Harvey Mudd, Boerkoel worked as a postdoctoral associate with the Interactive Robotics Group at MIT. He completed his PhD thesis on developing distributed approaches for constraint-based, multi-agent scheduling at the University of Michigan.

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Further Resources