Abstract

Robots can be highly capable, but without understanding human preferences, their utility remains fundamentally limited. This talk advances a framework for human augmentation through embodied social intelligence, grounded in three key dimensions. First, human-centered robot design, where I discuss methods to meaningfully involve people throughout a robot development lifecycle, while balancing the need for general-purpose systems with the specificity of human needs. Second, embodied AI systems, where I introduce my work on robotic hardware fabrication and context-agnostic algorithms that enable robust, real-world interaction. Third, robot evaluation in the wild, focusing on deployments in domains such as healthcare and the need for new metrics that combine experimental rigor with system performance. Drawing from my experience across academia and industry, including building Astro at Amazon and working on critical AI challenges at Meta, I highlight open problems at the intersection of AI, robotics, and human-centered design. Ultimately, I argue for a shift in robotics: from intelligence to relationships, from capability to meaning. Prioritizing human needs, values, and lived experiences is not a constraint; instead it is the path toward building robots that are truly effective, adaptive, and accepted.

Bio

Patricia Alves-Oliveira is an Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan and a member of the Advisory Board at Meta. She leads the Robot Studio, a research lab dedicated to advancing human augmentation through embodied social intelligence, focusing on designing robots that understand and support human preferences, particularly in healthcare. Her work bridges human-centered robot design, embodied AI systems, and real-world evaluation, as she develops novel robotic hardware and context-agnostic algorithms, while studying how robots can integrate into everyday life in socially intelligent ways. Previously, Patricia was a Senior UX Designer at Amazon Lab126, contributing to Astro, the company’s first home robot, and held a postdoctoral position at the University of Washington. She received her Ph.D. from the University Institute of Lisbon, with time at Cornell University. Her research has received three Best Paper Awards at ACM/IEEE HRI. She is co-founder of Talking Robotics and has been recognized as a Rising Woman Star in Social Robotics (2025), EECS Rising Star (2020), and Future DigiLeader (2020). Her work has been featured in IEEE, RoboHub, MLive, among others.

Hosts

• Antonio Paolillo, Senior researcher SUPSI, Autonomous robotics research area of the Dalle Molle Institute of Artificial Intelligence (IDSIA USI-SUPSI)
• Monica Landoni, Adjunct Professor USI of the Dalle Molle Institute for Artificial Intelligence (IDSIA USI-SUPSI)