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Aaron Steinfeld
Systems Scientist

Associated centers: VASC and MRTC

Email address: steinfeld@cmu.edu

Mailing address:
Carnegie Mellon University
Robotics Institute
5000 Forbes Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA 15213

For more information, see my personal homepage.

Jump to: Research interests | Keywords | Labs & groups | Projects | Publications

My specialty is human-robot interaction. The central themes of my work are what I prefer to term constrained user interfaces and operator assistance. I am interested in how to enable timely and appropriate interaction when interfaces are restricted through design, tasks, the environment, time pressures, and/or user abilities. I utilize training and experience in human factors and ergonomics, robotics, intelligent transportation, rehabilitation, human-computer interaction, universal design, wearable computing, and research methods. My two core areas of interest are:

Human-Robot Intent Fusion: A system level view is important for ensuring task success through a mixture of human adaptability and robot precision and perseverance.

Appropriate Robot Behavior: End users expect appropriate robot actions, interventions, and requests for human assistance.

I have a strong interest and extensive experience with design and execution of evaluation experiments for complex human-in-the-loop systems.

Examples of past work includes human-machine interaction and interfaces for collision warning systems, drowsy driving, zero- visibility snowplow operations, advanced in-vehicle systems, head-up displays, real-time captioning, rehabilitation robotics, military robotics, semi and fully autonomous mobile robots, and software agents.

design, human factors, human-computer interaction, human-robot interaction, intelligent transportation, medical applications, mobile robots, quality-of-life technology, and teleoperation

• Human-Robot Interaction Group - We are interested in many aspects of human-robot interaction related to how humans and robots can work safely and effectively together.
• NavLab - Autonomous Vehicles and Driver Assistance

• CTA Robotics - This project adresses the problems of scene interpretation and path planning for mobile robot navigation in natural environment.
• Cyberinfrastructure for Human-Robot Interaction Research - We seek to provide the field of Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) with collaborative mechanisms and methods for evaluation and exploratory analysis.
• Quality of Life Technology Center - QoLT is a unique partnership between Carnegie Mellon and the University of Pittsburgh that brings together a cross-disciplinary team of technologists, clinicians, industry partners, end users, and other stakeholders to create revolutionary technologies that will improve and sustain the quality of life for all people.
• Reflective Agents with Distributed Adaptive Reasoning - The focus of the RADAR project is to build a cognitive assistant that embodies machine learning technology that is able to function without requiring expert tuning or specially trained users.

• BlindAid: An Electronic Travel Aid for the Blind
  S. Mau, N. Melchior, M. Makatchev, and A. Steinfeld
  tech. report CMU-RI-TR-07-39, Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, May, 2008. [Abstract]
  Download: pdf [1272 KB] copyrighted

• Successful User Interfaces for RADAR
  A. Faulring, K. Mohnkern, A. Steinfeld, and B.A. Myers
  CHI 2008 Workshop on Usable Artificial Intelligence, 2008. [Abstract]
  Download: pdf [149 KB] copyrighted

• Evaluation of an Integrated Multi-Task Machine Learning System with Humans in the Loop
  A. Steinfeld, S.R. Bennett, K. Cunningham, M. Lahut, P. Quinones, D. Wexler, D. Siewiorek, J. Hayes, P. Cohen, J. Fitzgerald, O. Hansson, M. Pool, and M. Drummond
  NIST Performance Metrics for Intelligent Systems Workshop (PerMIS), 2007. [Abstract]
  Download: pdf [1115 KB] copyrighted

• Survey measures for evaluation of cognitive assistants
  A. Steinfeld, P. Quinones, J. Zimmerman, S.R. Bennett, and D. Siewiorek
  NIST Performance Metrics for Intelligent Systems Workshop (PerMIS), 2007. [Abstract]
  Download: pdf [457 KB] copyrighted

• Toward Human-Robot Interface Standards II: An Examination of Common Elements in Human-Robot Interaction Across the Space Enterprise
  J. Ferketic, L. Goldblatt, E. Hodgson, S. Murray, R. Wichowski, A. Bradley, T.W. Fong, J. Evans, W. Chun, R. Stiles, M.A. Goodrich, A. Steinfeld, D. King, and C. Erkorkmaz
  AIAA Space 2006, September, 2006. [Abstract]
  Download: pdf [824 KB] copyrighted

• Toward Human-Robot Interface Standards I: Use of Standardization and Intelligent Subsystems for Advancing Human-Robotic Competency in Space Exploration
  J. Ferketic, L. Goldblatt, E. Hodgson, S. Murray, R. Wichowski, A. Bradley, T.W. Fong, J. Evans, W. Chun, R. Stiles, M. Goodrich, and A. Steinfeld
  SAE 36th International Conference on Environmental Systems, No. 2006-01-2019, July, 2006. [Abstract]
  Download: pdf [592 KB] copyrighted

• The RADAR Test Methodology: Evaluating a Multi-Task Machine Learning System with Humans in the Loop
  A. Steinfeld, R. Bennett, K. Cunningham, M. Lahut, P. Quinones, D. Wexler, D. Siewiorek, P. Cohen, J. Fitzgerald, O. Hansson, J. Hayes, M. Pool, and M. Drummond
  tech. report CMU-CS-06-125, Computer Science Department, Carnegie Mellon University, May, 2006. [Abstract]
  Download: pdf [1530 KB] copyrighted

• Common Metrics for Human-Robot Interaction
  A. Steinfeld, T.W. Fong, D. Kaber, M. Lewis, J. Scholtz, A. Schultz, and M. Goodrich
  2006 Human-Robot Interaction Conference, ACM, March, 2006. [Abstract]
  Download: pdf [110 KB] copyrighted

• Accessibility and intelligent transportation systems
  A. Steinfeld
  Wheeled Mobility and Accessible Transportation 2003 Conference Proceedings, U.S. Department of Education, Interagency Committee on Disability Research (ICDR), Washington, DC, 2006, pp. 35-37.
  Download: pdf [853 KB] copyrighted

• Human-robot interaction
  A. Steinfeld
  International Encyclopedia of Ergonomics and Human Factors, 2nd Edition, W. Karwowski, ed., Taylor & Francis, London, 2006.