The INTEGRATE Colloquium will provide trainers and trainees the opportunity to engage other UW–Madison faculty working in relevant areas and invited external “keynote” speakers who are leaders in research at the intersection of robotics, work, and society. The wide range of topics are intentional to enrich trainee perspectives, backgrounds, and experiences. Participants will be encouraged to engage in follow-up discussion, networking, and socializing and thus serve as a catalyst for communication and community building.
If you would be interested in giving a talk, please contact Kristie Schultz.
Friday, November 7, 2025
Robot Learning and Wearable Interfaces in Pursuit of Robotic Caregivers
Designing safe and reliable robotic assistance for caregiving is a grand challenge in robotics. A sixth of the United States population is over the age of 65 and in 2014 more than a quarter of the population had a disability. Robotic caregivers could positively benefit society; yet, physical robotic assistance presents several challenges and open research questions relating to autonomous control, multimodal sensing and learning, and accessible interfaces. In this talk, I will present recent techniques and technology that my group has developed towards addressing core challenges in robotic caregiving. First, I will introduce inertial and high-density electromyography (HDEMG) wearable interfaces that enable people with severe loss of motor and hand function (due to spinal cord injury or neurodegenerative diseases) to embody physically assistive mobile manipulators in their home. I will then present our recent work in robot learning, including online and offline policy learning, to perform complex manipulation in assistive scenarios. This includes learning reward functions and robot control policies from real-world videos of assistance, a framework for integrating LLMs into physically assistive robots, and new opportunities presented by generative simulation.
Zackory Erickson, http://zackory.com
Zackory is a tenure-track Assistant Professor in The Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, where he leads the Robotic Caregiving and Human Interaction (RCHI) Lab. His research focuses on developing new robot learning, mobile manipulation, and sensing methods, with applications in physical human-robot interaction and healthcare.
Previously, he received his PhD in Robotics at Georgia Tech advised by Charlie Kemp.
Upcoming Talks
Orchard View Room, Discovery Building – 9:30 a.m.
Friday, November 7, 2025 Zackory Erickson, Assistant Professor, Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University
Wednesday, December 3, 2025 Alice Wu, Assistant Professor of Economics at UW-Madison
Wednesday, February 4, 2026 Mike Hagenow, Assistant Professor of Computer Science at UW-Madison
Archived Talks
March 5, 2025 – Robots and Inequality: Between and Within Occupations Rodimiro Rodrigo, Assistant Professor of International Business and Economics at the George Washington University School of Business (GWSB).
February 26, 2025 – Rethinking Design for Human-Robot Collaboration. EunJeong Cheon, Assistant Professor in the School of Information Studies and Senior Research Associate at the Autonomous Systems Policy Institute (ASPI) at Syracuse University. Zoom recording available, integrate-nrt@wisc.edu.
November 6, 2024 – Automation and Labor: The Role of Robots Hee Rin Lee, Assistant Professor in the Department of Media and Information at Michigan State University.
October 2, 2024 – Mapping the Mind: Neuroergonomics Insights into Human-Machine Interaction. Ranjana Mehta, Grainger Institute of Engineering Professor in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the University of Wisconsin Madison.
April 17, 2024 – Economics of Automation, Robots, Competition, and Jobs. Victor Bennett, Professor of Entrepreneurship and Strategy at the University of Utah‘s Eccles School of Business.
February 28, 2024 – Blending Reality: The Real-World Impact of XR Technologies Kevin Ponto, Associate Professor at WID and in the Design Studies Department in the School of Human Ecology at UW-Madison.
November 8, 2023 – The Second Robot Problem: Obstacles to Manufacturing Automation at Scale. Ben Armstrong, Executive Director, MIT Industrial Performance Center.
September 27, 2023 – Copyright’s Latent Space: From Fair Use to Generative Art BJ Ard, Law School, University of Wisconsin-Madison.
April 28, 2023 – First Wisconsin Robotics Symposium A collaboration between UW-Madison robotics faculty, grad students and industry.
April 19, 2023 – Enhancing Safety and Efficiency in Human-Robot Collaboration for Future Manufacturing Workspaces Dr. Marvin Cheng, Assistant Coordinator, Center for Occupational Robotics Research (CORR), NIOSH
March 22, 2023 – Exoskeleton-Enabled Future of Work in Construction Zhenhua Zhu, Ph.D., P.Eng., Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Wisconsin – Madison.