University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
The Grainger College of Engineering
Health Care Engineering Systems Center

Katherine Driggs-Campbell, Ph.D.

Katherine Driggs-Campbell, Ph.D.
Katherine Driggs-Campbell, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Illinois Urbana Champaig

Title: Introducing WayBot: A Wayfinding Assistant Robot for People with Visual Impairments

Abstract: One of the major challenges for people with visual impairments (PwVI) is wayfinding: the task of orienting and navigating unfamiliar spaces. These challenges are more extreme for aging individuals, who may also have mobility constraints and may experience major life changes like moving to an assistive living facility. Motivated by recent advances in robotics and AI, we have begun to develop WayBot, a robot guide that can provide navigation support and environment information through dialogue. WayBot is able to effectively navigate (unknown) environments while accounting for the user, while engaging in a dialogue with the user. WayBot can understand open-vocabulary goals, describe the environment, and answer questions from visual observations. We have conducted user needs assessment with our target population and pilot user study to evaluate our robot design. Our hope is that by designing a generalizable and interactive robot guide, we can enable independent navigation and provide these individuals with support when participating in community or social events and getting familiar with new spaces.

Bio: Katie Driggs-Campbell is currently an assistant professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, with an affiliate appointment in the Department of Computer Science. Prior to joining Illinois, she received a B.S.E. with honors from Arizona State University in 2012 and an M.S. from UC Berkeley in 2015.  She earned her PhD in 2017 in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences from the University of California, Berkeley.

After that, she was a Postdoctoral Research Scholar at the Stanford Intelligent Systems Laboratory in the Aeronautics and Astronautics Department. Katie now runs the Human-Centered Autonomy Lab, which aims to design safe autonomous systems and robots that can safely interact with people out in the real-world. Her work draws from the fields of robotics, learning & AI, decision-making & control, and human factors. Katie is a recipient of the NSF CAREER award, the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society’s Early Academic Career Award, and multiple best paper awards (or runner ups) for her contributions to autonomous systems, robot learning, and human-centered AI.