Social and Intelligent Robotics Research Lab - SIRRL

03/19/2026

This week two of our lab members presented their work at HRI2026!

Soomin Shin took part in the Pioneers Workshop and presented her work "From Co-design to Deployment: Towards Sustainable & Scalable Socially Assistive Robots for Speech-Language Therapy".

Neil Fernandes, co-supervised by Yue Hu , presented his paper "Co-designing a Social Robot for Newcomer Children's Cultural and Language Learning".

Link to papers: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3776734.3794628, https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3776734.3794350

02/15/2024

Where will this take place? University of Waterloo



Children will receive a small 3D-printed gift at the end and

a lab tour to meet different social robots. Each family will

in addition receive a $20 gift card.



Have any questions ? Email [email protected]

06/02/2023

7 papers from SIRRL were accepted to RO-MAN 2023.

03/16/2023

Robots helping children with disabilities stay on track on Springwise!

The robots use jokes and breathing exercises to help students focus

03/16/2023

University of Waterloo Media Relations talked to Prof. Kerstin Dautenhahn about great potential for using social robots in the public education system.
Engineering researchers at the University of Waterloo are successfully using a robot to keep students with learning disabilities focus on their work.

Engineering researchers at the University of Waterloo are successfully using a robot to help keep children with learning disabilities focused on their work. This was one of the key results in a new study that also found both the youngsters and their instructors valued the positive classroom contribu...

02/14/2023

SIRRL member, Pourya Aliasghari, was awarded a FOE University of Waterloo Graduate Scholarship for his academic achievements in Fall 2022 term.

11/21/2022

Article by Akgun, Ghafurian, Crowley, Dautenhahn in IEEE Trans. on Affective Computing proposes emotions as a communication modality in search and rescue robots and a method for using lights to convey a range of emotions in appearance constraint robots: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9947064

11/05/2022

Check out this new book on Socially Interactive Agents by Birgit Lugrin, Catherine Pelachaud, and David Traum: https://dl.acm.org/doi/book/10.1145/3563659. SIRRL members Moojan Ghafurian, John Munoz, and Kerstin Dautenhahn contributed to a chapter on Socially Interactive Agents for Supporting Aging.

11/05/2022

At the 2022 IEEE IROS Conference in Kyoto, Kerstin Dautenhahn was one of the 35 Women in Robotics Engineering and Science (WiRES) honorees celebrated on 25 October 2022. The event honored 35 WiRES who have made significant contributions in the past 35 IROS conferences (https://iros2022.org/program/iros-35th-anniversary-forum/).

10/27/2022

SIRRL member, Dr. Shruti Chandra () was invited to participate as a fellow at Digitalize in Stockholm Conference 2022 last week. - a platform for cross-disciplinary researchers in academia & industry to engage in digital transformation.

08/26/2022

We are looking for Family Doctors and Nurse Practitioners in Canada to participate in a short interview about their preferences for use of smart home technologies for remote patient monitoring. See below to participate or learn more.

Research Study on Design and Use of Smart Home Devices for Remote Patient Monitoring We are recruiting participants to take part in a study conducted by our research team at the University of Waterloo about the preferred use and design of smart home systems for remote patient monitoring. It will be....

06/28/2022

: "Opportunities for social robots in the stuttering clinic: A review and proposed scenarios" has been published in Paladyn, Journal of Behavioral Robotics.
Authors: Shruti Chandra, Garima Gupta, Torrey Loucks, and Kerstin Dautenhahn
Read the article:

The inclusion of technologies such as telepractice, and virtual reality in the field of communication disorders has transformed the approach to providing healthcare. This research article proposes the employment of similar advanced technology – social robots, by providing a context and scenarios f...