Human-Robot Interaction · Social Robotics
Nipuni Wijesinghe
PhD Candidate, Collaborative Robotics Lab, University of Canberra
Hello, welcome to my site! I am a PhD candidate in Human-Robot Interaction at the University of Canberra, working within the Collaborative Robotics Lab under Prof. Damith Herath, Dr. Maleen Jayasuriya, and A/Prof. Janie Busby Grant. My research, Social Presence Modulation, explores how robots can read their social environment in real time and dynamically adjust how present or engaged they appear, moving away from a fixed, one size fits all level of robot presence. Before starting my PhD, I worked as a Business Analyst at Axiata Digital Labs, and I currently combine my research with sessional teaching and lab coordination at the university. From this site you can find an overview of all my work.
An audio-centric context identification module combining ambient sound, keyword, and sentiment analysis to let a robot understand the social situation it is in.
A reinforcement learning approach to gaze behaviour, validated through human studies, supporting three presence goals: grab attention, fade into the background, or maintain moderate engagement.
A presence control algorithm and a markerless teleoperation and imitation learning pipeline for transferring natural social behaviours from humans to robots.