Maja Matarić Pioneered Socially Assistive Robotics

The robots may have conversations, play video games, and reply to feelings.

Immediately the IEEE Fellow is a professor at USC. She research how robots might help college students with nervousness and melancholy endure cognitive behavioral remedy. CBT focuses on altering an individual’s unfavorable thought patterns, behaviors, and emotional responses.

For her work, she acquired a 2025 Robotics Medal from MassRobotics, which acknowledges feminine researchers advancing robotics. The Boston-based nonprofit supplies robotics startups with a workspace, prototyping services, mentorship, and networking alternatives.

When receiving the award on the ceremony in Boston, Matarić was overcome with pleasure, she says.

“I’ve been very lucky to be honored with a number of awards, which I’m grateful for. However there was one thing very particular about getting the MassRobotics medal, as a result of I knew at the very least half the individuals within the room,” she says. “Everybody was simply smiling, and there was an amazing sense of affection.”

Seeing herself as an engineer

Matarić grew up in Belgrade, Serbia. Her father was an engineer, and her mom was a author. After her father died when she was 16, Matarić and her mom moved to the United States.

She credit her father for igniting her curiosity in engineering, and her uncle who labored as an aerospace engineer for introducing her to laptop science.

Matarić says she didn’t take into account herself an engineer till she joined USC’s school, since she at all times had labored in laptop science.

“On reflection, I’ve at all times been an engineer,” Matarić says. “However I didn’t set out particularly considering of myself as one—which is simply one of many many issues I wish to convey to younger individuals: You don’t at all times need to know precisely all the pieces upfront.”

Maja Matarić and her lab are exploring how socially assistive robots might help enhance the communication abilities of kids with autism spectrum disorder. National Science Foundation Information

Whereas pursuing her bachelor’s diploma in laptop science on the University of Kansas in Lawrence, she was launched to industrial robotics by means of a textbook. After incomes her diploma in 1987, she had a possibility to proceed her training as a graduate pupil at MIT’s AI Lab (now the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab). Throughout her first 12 months, she explored the totally different analysis initiatives being performed by school members, she stated in a 2010 oral history performed by the IEEE History Center. She met IEEE Life Fellow Rodney Brooks, who was engaged on novel reactive and behavior-based robotic methods. His work so excited her that she joined his lab and performed her grasp’s thesis below his tutelage.

Impressed by the best way animals use landmarks to navigate, Matarić developed Toto, the primary navigating behavior-based robotic. Toto used distributed fashions to map the AI Lab constructing the place Matarić labored and plan its path to totally different rooms. Toto used sonar to detect partitions, doorways, and furnishings, in accordance with Matarić’s paper, “The Robotics Primer.”

After incomes her grasp’s diploma in AI and robotics in 1990, she continued to work below Brooks as a doctoral pupil, pioneering distributed algorithms that allowed a workforce of as much as 20 robots to execute advanced duties in tandem, together with looking for objects and exploring their setting.

Matarić earned her Ph.D. in AI and robotics in 1994 and joined Brandeis University, in Waltham, Mass., as an assistant professor of laptop science. There she based the Interplay Lab, the place she developed autonomous robots that work collectively to perform duties.

Three years later, she relocated to California and joined USC’s Viterbi School of Engineering as an assistant professor in laptop science and neuroscience.

In 2002 she helped to discovered the Heart for Robotics and Embedded Systems (now the Robotics and Autonomous Systems Center). The RASC focuses on analysis into human-centric and scalable robotic methods and promotes interdisciplinary partnerships throughout USC.

Matarić’s shift in her analysis got here after she gave beginning to her first baby in 1998. When her daughter was a bit older and requested Matarić why she labored with robots, she needed to have the ability to “say one thing higher than ‘I publish a whole lot of analysis papers,’ or ‘it’s well-recognized,’” she says.

“In academia, you might be in a management function and nonetheless do analysis. It’s an exquisite and vital alternative that lets teachers be on prime of our discipline and likewise practice the following era of scholars and assist the following era of college colleagues.”

“Children don’t take into account these good solutions, and so they’re in all probability proper,” she says. “This made me notice I used to be ready to do one thing totally different. And I actually needed the reply to my daughter’s future query to be, ‘Mommy’s robots assist individuals.’”

Matarić and her doctoral pupil David Feil-Seifer offered a paper defining socially assistive robotics on the 2005 International Conference on Rehabilitation Robotics. It was the one paper that talked about serving to individuals full duties and be taught abilities by talking with them moderately than by performing bodily jobs, she says.

Feil-Seifer is now a professor of laptop science and engineering on the University of Nevada in Reno.

On the similar time, she based the Interaction Lab at USC and made its focus creating robots that present social, moderately than bodily, help.

“At this level in my profession journey, I’ve matured to a spot the place I don’t need to just do curiosity-driven analysis alone,” she says. “Loads of what my workforce and I do as we speak continues to be pushed by curiosity, however it’s answering the query: ‘How can we assist somebody dwell a greater life?’”

In 2006 she was promoted to full professor and made the senior affiliate dean for analysis in USC’s Viterbi Faculty of Engineering. In 2012 she turned vice dean for analysis.

“In academia, you might be in a management function and nonetheless do analysis,” she says. “It’s an exquisite and vital alternative that lets teachers be on prime of our discipline and likewise practice the following era of scholars and assist the following era of college colleagues.”

Analysis in socially assistive robotics

One of many longest analysis initiatives Matarić has led at her Interplay Lab is exploring how socially assistive robots might help enhance the communication abilities of kids with autism spectrum disorder. ASD is a lifelong neurological situation that impacts the best way individuals work together with others, and the best way they be taught. Kids with ASD usually battle with social behaviors reminiscent of studying nonverbal cues, enjoying with others, and making eye contact.

Matarić and her workforce developed a robotic, Bandit, that may play video games with a toddler and provides the teenager phrases of affirmation. Bandit is 56 centimeters tall and has a humanlike head, torso, and arms. Its head can pan and tilt. The robotic makes use of two FireWire cameras as its eyes, and it has a movable mouth and eyebrows, permitting it to exhibit quite a lot of facial expressions, in accordance with the IEEE Spectrum’s robots guide. Its torso is connected to a wheeled base.

The research confirmed that when interacting with Bandit, kids with ASD exhibited social behaviors that had been out of the atypical for them, reminiscent of initiating play and imitating the robotic.

Matarić and her workforce additionally studied how the robotic may function a social and cognitive help for elderly individuals and stroke sufferers. Bandit was programmed to instruct and encourage customers to carry out each day motion workouts reminiscent of seated aerobics.

Maja Matarić and doctoral pupil Amy O’Connell testing Blossom, which is getting used to check the way it can help college students with nervousness or melancholy.College of Southern California

Over time, Matarić’s lab developed different robots together with Kiwi and Blossom. Kiwi, which appeared like an owl, helped kids with ASD be taught social and cognitive abilities, helped encourage aged individuals residing alone to be extra bodily energetic, and mediated discussions amongst relations. Blossom, initially developed at Cornell, was tailored by the Interplay Lab to make it cheaper and personalizable for people. The robotic is getting used to check the way it can help college students with nervousness or melancholy to apply cognitive behavioral remedy.

Matarić’s line of analysis started when she discovered that enormous language mannequin (LLM) chatbots had been being promoted to assist individuals with mental health struggles, she stated in an episode of the AMA Medical News podcast.

“It’s usually not simple to get [an appointment with a] therapist, or there won’t be insurance coverage protection,” she stated. “These, mixed with the charges of tension and melancholy, created an actual want.”

That made the chatbot thought interesting, she says, however she was to see in the event that they had been efficient in contrast with a pleasant robotic reminiscent of Blossom.

Matarić and her workforce used the identical LLMs to energy CBT apply with a chatbot and with Blossom. They ran a two-week research within the USC dorms, the place college students had been randomly assigned to finish CBT workouts each day with both a chatbot or the robotic. Individuals crammed out a medical evaluation to measure their psychiatric misery earlier than and after every session.

The research confirmed that college students who interacted with the robotic skilled a major lower of their psychological state, Matarić stated within the podcast, and college students who interacted with the chatbot didn’t.

“Becoming a member of an [IEEE] society has an influence, and it may be private. That’s why I like to recommend my college students be a part of the group—as a result of it’s vital to get on the market and get related.”

She and her workforce additionally reviewed transcripts of conversations between the scholars and the robotic to guage how effectively the LLM responded to the members. They discovered the robotic was simpler than the chatbot, although each had been utilizing the identical mannequin.

Based mostly on these findings, in 2024 Matarić acquired a grant from the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health to conduct a six-week medical trial to discover how efficient a socially assistive robotic may very well be at delivering CBT apply. The trial, at present underway, additionally is anticipated to check how Blossom might be personalised to adapt to every consumer’s preferences and progress, together with the best way the robotic strikes, which workouts it recommends, and what suggestions it offers.

Throughout the trial, the 120 college students collaborating are sporting Fitbits to check their physiologic responses. The members fill out a medical evaluation to measure their psychiatric misery earlier than and after every session.

Knowledge together with the members’ emotions of referring to the robotic, intrinsic motivation, engagement, and adherence shall be assessed by the analysis workforce, Matarić says.

She says she’s happy with the graduate college students engaged on this undertaking, and seeing them develop as engineers is among the most rewarding elements of working in academia.

“Engineers usually don’t anticipate having to work with human research members and needing to know psychology along with the hardcore engineering,” she says. “So the scholars who select to do that analysis are simply fantastic, caring individuals.”

Discovering a neighborhood at IEEE

Matarić joined IEEE as a graduate pupil in 1992, the 12 months she revealed her first paper in IEEE Transactions on Robotics and Automation. The paper, “Integration of Representation Into Goal-Driven Behavior-Based Robots,” described her work on Toto.

As a member of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society, she says she has gained a neighborhood of like-minded individuals. She enjoys attending conferences together with the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, and the ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, which is closest to her discipline of analysis.

Matarić credit IEEE Life Fellow George Bekey, the founding editor in chief of the IEEE Transactions on Robotics, for recruiting her for the USC engineering school place. He knew of her work by means of her graduate advisor Brooks, who revealed a paper within the journal that launched reactive management and the subsumption structure, which turned the muse of a brand new solution to management robots. It’s his most cited paper. Bekey, who was editor in chief on the time, helped information Brooks by means of the difficult overview course of. Matarić joined Brooks’s lab at MIT two years after its publication, and her work on Toto constructed on that basis.

“Becoming a member of a society has an influence, and it may be private,” she says. “That’s why I like to recommend my college students be a part of the group—as a result of it’s vital to get on the market and get related.”