welcome to the
HEATlab
human experience & agent teamwork laboratory @ harvey mudd
Learn More!

Vision

A world in which computational agents intuitively and fluidly navigate the messiness of people's lives.

The mission of the HEATlab is to create new techniques for human-robot teaming—the flexible navigation and coordination of complex, inter-related activities in shared spaces. We focus on using ideas from AI to automate the scheduling and coordination of multiple agents, including humans, computational agents, and robots (embodied agents). We are particularly motivated by the challenge of coordinating the activities of human-robot teams in environments that require explicit cooperation to be successful. Our goal is to create human-robot teams is that the relative strengths of humans and agents to accomplish what neither can achieve alone. Read more in the recent PCMag interview with Jim about HEATlab!
For the latest HEATlab news and highlights, follow us on social media:

Projects

Click on the project descriptions below for more details about what we do and how you can apply to get involved!

Apply at: https://www.cs.hmc.edu/research/

Publications

Here is a selection of our publications. Click here for a more comprehensive list.

An Undergraduate Consortium for Addressing the Leaky Pipeline to Computing Research

Boerkoel and Ergezer

Sensitivity Analysis for Dynamic Control of PSTNs with Skewed Distributions

Chen, Ma, Wu, and Boerkoel

Analyzing the Fluency of Human-Robot Interactions

Weiss, Jacotin, Jackson, Yuan, and Boerkoel

Simple Temporal Networks for Improvisational Teamwork

Morgan, Schalkwyk, Wang, Davalos, Martinez, Rohilla, and Boerkoel

Quantifying Controllability in Temporal Networks with Uncertainty

Akmal, Ammons, Li, Gao, Popowski, and Boerkoel

Modeling Human Temporal Uncertainty in Human-Agent Teams

Abo Dominguez, La, and Boerkoel

Dynamic Control of Probabilistic Simple Temporal Networks

Gao, Popowski, and Boerkoel

MAD-TN: A Tool for Measuring Fluency in Human-Robot Collaboration

Isaacson, Rice, and Boerkoel

Quantifying Degrees of Controllability in Temporal Networks with Uncertainty

Akmal, Ammons, Li, and Boerkoel

DREAM: An Algorithm for Mitigating the Overhead of Robust Rescheduling

Abrahams, Chu, Diehl, Knittel, Lin, Lloyd, Boerkoel, and Frank

Measuring and Optimizing Durability against Scheduling Disturbances

Lee, Ojha, and Boerkoel

New Perspectives on Flexibility in Simple Temporal Planning

Huang, Lloyd, Omar, and Boerkoel

Who Takes the Lead? Automated Scheduling for Human-Robot Teams

Castro, Roberts, Mena, and Boerkoel

Robust Execution of Probabilistic Temporal Plans

Lund, Dietrich, Chow, and Boerkoel

Trust and Cooperation in Human-Robot Decision Making

Wu, Paeng, Linder, Valdesolo, and Boerkoel

Robustness in Probabilistic Temporal Planning

Brooks, Reed, Gruver, and Boerkoel

Predicting the Quality of User Experiences to Improve Productivity and Wellness

Donti, Rosenbloom, Gruver, and Boerkoel

Exploring Active and Passive Team-Based Coordination

Donti and Boerkoel

Distributed Reasoning for Multiagent Simple Temporal Problems

Boerkoel and Durfee

Towards Control and Sensing for an Autonomous Mobile Robot Assistant Navigating Assembly Lines

Unhelkar, Perez, Boerkoel, Bix, Bartscher, and Shah

Distributed Algorithms for Incrementally Maintaining Multiagent Simple Temporal Networks

Boerkoel, Planken, Wilcox, and Shah

Planning for Flexible Human-Robot Co-navigation in Dynamic Manufacturing Environments

Boerkoel and Shah

Using Hybrid Scheduling for the Semi-Autonomous Formation of Expert Teams

Durfee, Boerkoel, and Sleight

Decoupling the Multiagent Disjunctive Temporal Problem

Boerkoel and Durfee

A Distributed Approach to Summarizing Spaces of Multiagent Schedules

Boerkoel and Durfee

Generalized Solution Techniques for Preference-Based Constrained Optimization with CP-nets

Boerkoel, Durfee, and Purrington

Current Team

Julia Hansen '25

MAD about Fluency

Rosy Chen, '24

Improvisational Teamwork

Zeneve Jacotin, '24

MAD about Fluency

Eryn Ma, Pomona '24

Improvisational Teamwork

Emily Weiss, '24

MAD about Fluency

Amy Yuan '24

MAD about Fluency

Lab Alumni

Malia Morgan '23

Improvisational Teamwork

Julianna Schalkwyk '23

Improvisational Teamwork

Ingrid Wu '23

Improvisational Teamwork

Maya Abo Dominguez '22

MAD about Fluency

William La '22

MAD about Fluency

Ryan Martinez '22

Prob-in-Ctrl

Vibha Rohilla '22

Prob-in-Ctrl

Yuki Wang '22

Improvisational Teamwork

Hannah Davalos '21

Prob-in-Ctrl

Seth Isaacson '21

MAD about Fluency

Lindsay Popowski '21

Ctrl-Alt-Repeat

Savana Ammons '20

Prob-in-Ctrl

Michael Gao '20

Ctrl-Alt-Repeat

Joon Lee '20

Acrobotics

Tiffany Madruga'20

MAD About Fluency

Athena Paraskevas-Nevius'20

MAD About Fluency

Megan Robalewski, Scripps College'20

MAD About Fluency

Gretchen Rice, Olin College '20

MAD about Fluency

Jordan Abrahams '19

Robot Brunch

Shyan Akmal'19

Prob-in-Ctrl

Morgan Frisby '19

HRI in Retail

Maggie Li '19

Prob-in-Ctrl

Viva Ojha '19

Acrobotics

Brenner Ryan '19

Robot Brunch

Amy Huang '18

PolyBots!

Liam Lloyd '18

PolyBots!

Montana Roberts, Scripps '18

Human-Robot Teamwork

Jane Wu '18

Human Robot Teamwork

Scott Chow '17

Robot Brunch

Sam Dietrich '17

Robot Brunch

Kyle Lund '17

Robot Brunch

Erin Paeng '17

Human Robot Teamwork

Emi Reed '17

Robot Brunch; PaWPal

Sam Echevarria '16

PaWPal

Kari Linder, CMC '16

Human Robot Teamwork

Emma Meersman '16

PaWPal

Alex Gruver '15

PaWPal; Robot Brunch

Jacob Rosenbloom '15

PaWPal

Jeb Brooks '14

Robot Brunch

Contact Us

The online application for summer undergradate research positions is posted here each January, so please check back soon!
Please note: there are currently no available positions for independent research, high school student interns or graduate students.

For all other opportunities to get involved, please follow us on social media!