Charlie Kemp

[Administrator]

Co-founder and CTO of Hello Robot Inc.

Founder of Healthcare Robotics Lab

Personal website - charliekemp.com

linkedin.com/in/charlie-kemp

 

[Administrator]

How do people respond to being touched by a robot?

Uploaded on Mar 4, 2011

How might people react if they were touched by a robot? Would they recoil, or would they take it in stride? In an initial study, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology found people generally had a positive response toward being touched by a robotic nurse, but that their perception of the robot's intent made a significant difference.

Charlie Kemp, assistant professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University, and Tiffany Chen, doctoral student at Tech, talk about their investigation that looks at how being attended by a robot can affect people's comfort level.

The research took place in Kemp's Healthcare Robotics Lab with the robot known as Cody. Cody is now sporting new Xbox 360 Kinect headgear, gear that he didn't have in the initial study.

 

[Administrator]

Charlie Kemp's 2008 Robotics Institute Seminar at CMU

Apr 24, 2025

Autonomous Mobile Manipulation for the Motor Impaired

Charlie Kemp
Georgia Tech

Time and Place

Mauldin Auditorium (NSH 1305)
Time: 3:30pm to 4:30pm on October 31, 2008
Abstract

For millions of people on a daily basis, motor impairments diminish quality of life, reduce independence, and increase healthcare costs. Assistive robots that autonomously manipulate objects within everyday settings offer the potential to improve the lives of the elderly, injured, and disabled by augmenting their abilities with those of a cooperative robot. Within this talk, I will give an overview of my lab's research on autonomous mobile manipulation for people with motor impairments, which has resulted in EL-E, a prototype mobile manipulator capable of performing a variety of assistive manipulation tasks, such as object fetching, door opening, and drawer opening.

Three key questions drive this research: what tasks would be valuable for an assistive robot to perform; how can motor-impaired users direct a robot to perform these tasks; and how can a robot perform these tasks in unstructured environments, such as the home? To help answer these questions, we have taken inspiration from helper monkeys and service dogs. We have also integrated patient studies throughout the research process from initial design to systems-level evaluation through our collaboration with the ALS Center at the Emory School of Medicine. By taking a problem-driven, systems-level approach to our research, we have found synergistic answers to these questions that enable patients to work with robots in complementary ways that circumvent common stumbling blocks to deployable, real-world solutions.

Speaker Biography

Charles C. Kemp is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University. He received a doctorate in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT in 2005. He is a member of the Center for Robotics and Intelligent Machines at Georgia Tech and the Health Systems Institute, which houses his lab (http://healthcare-robotics.com). Charlie's current research focuses on autonomous robot manipulation and human-robot interaction for healthcare (http://charliekemp.com).

 

[Administrator]

RI Seminar: Charlie Kemp : Human-scale mobile manipulators happily used in homes?

Apr 19, 2025

What will it take for human-scale mobile manipulators to be happily used in homes?

Charlie Kemp
Cofounder, Chief Technology Officer
Hello Robot Inc.
April 18, 2025
Abstract:

When I started in robotics, my goal was to help robots emulate humans. Yet as my lab worked with people with mobility impairments, my notions of success changed. For assistive applications, emulation of humans is less important than ease of use and usefulness. Helping with seemingly simple tasks, such as scratching an itch or picking up a dropped object, can make a meaningful difference in a person’s life. Even full autonomy can be undesirable, since actively directing a robot can provide a sense of independence and agency. Overall, many benefits of robotic assistance derive from nonhuman aspects of robots, such as being tireless, directly controllable, and free of social characteristics that can inhibit use.

While technical challenges abound for home robots that attempt to emulate humans, I will provide evidence that human-scale mobile manipulators could benefit people with mobility impairments at home in the near future. I will describe work from my lab and Hello Robot that illustrates opportunities for valued assistance at home, including supporting activities of daily living, leading exercise games, and strengthening social connections. I will also present recent progress by Hello Robot toward unsupervised, daily in-home use by a person with severe mobility impairments.

Bio:

Dr. Charlie Kemp is a cofounder and the chief technology officer (CTO) of Hello Robot. Hello Robot sells Stretch, a novel mobile manipulator designed to work closely with people that is being used by hundreds of developers across 22 countries for diverse projects, including pioneering work on embodied AI, human-robot interaction, and assistive applications. Until 2023, Dr. Kemp was a tenured faculty member at Georgia Tech, where he founded the Healthcare Robotics Lab in 2007.

Dr. Kemp’s research has focused on enabling intelligent mobile manipulators to assist older adults and people with disabilities. He is passionate about open communities to advance robotics and has won awards for teaching biomechanics and a project-based robotics class. He earned a doctorate in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, an MEng, and BS from MIT. He is a co-author of over 120 peer-reviewed publications. His awards include a 3M Non-tenured Faculty Award, a Google Faculty Research Award, a Hesburgh Award Teaching Fellowship, and an NSF CAREER award. Hello Robot’s awards include the 2025 RBR50 Robots for Good Award, the 2024 IEEE Spectrum Technology in the Service of Society Award, the 2021 RBR50 Robotics Innovation Award, and the 2020 Silicon Valley Robotics Innovation Award.