Uploaded April 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Title: Physical Intelligence for Physical Care: Towards Stakeholder-Informed Caregiving Robots in the Real World
Speaker: Tapomayukh Bhattacharjee (Cornell)
Date: Friday, April 24, 2026
Abstract: How can we build robots that meaningfully assist people with mobility limitations in their daily lives? To support complex caregiving tasks such as robot-assisted feeding, bathing, transferring, and meal preparation, robots must physically interact with people and objects in dynamic, unstructured environments while maintaining safety. In this talk, I will present an overview of projects from the EmPRISE Lab that showcase fundamental advances in physical robot caregiving. I will highlight how we design stakeholder-informed systems with personalized contact-rich control policies and user functionality- and behavior-aware physical robot assistance. I will also share insights from deploying these systems with real users in real-world settings. Together, these efforts move us closer to building caregiving robots that are not only technically capable, but are also safe, deployable, and responsive to the real needs of people in care settings.
Bio: Tapomayukh "Tapo" Bhattacharjee is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Cornell University where he directs the EmPRISE Lab (https://emprise.cs.cornell.edu/). He completed his Ph.D. in Robotics from Georgia Institute of Technology and was an NIH Ruth L. Kirschstein NRSA postdoctoral research associate in Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington. His primary research interests are in the area of physical robot caregiving and physical human-robot interaction. He is the recipient of TRI Young Faculty Researcher Award'24, NSF CAREER Award'23, AFCEA 40 under 40 Award'22, and his work has won Best Paper Award at RSS’25, Best Paper and Student Paper Award Finalist and Best HRI Paper Award Finalist at ICRA’25, Best Systems Paper Award Finalist at HRI'24, Best Demo Award at HRI'24, Best RoboCup Paper Award at IROS’22, Best Paper Award Finalist and ABB Best Student Paper Award Finalist at IROS’22, Best Technical Advances Paper Award at HRI'19, and Best Demonstration Award at NeurIPS’18. His work has also been featured in many media outlets including the BBC, Reuters, New York Times, IEEE Spectrum, and GeekWire and his robot-assisted feeding work was selected to be one of the best interactive designs of 2019 by Fast Company.
This video is closed captioned.
Title: Physical Intelligence for Physical Care: Towards Stakeholder-Informed Caregiving Robots in the Real World
Speaker: Tapomayukh Bhattacharjee (Cornell)
Date: Friday, April 24, 2026
Abstract: How can we build robots that meaningfully assist people with mobility limitations in their daily lives? To support complex caregiving tasks such as robot-assisted feeding, bathing, transferring, and meal preparation, robots must physically interact with people and objects in dynamic, unstructured environments while maintaining safety. In this talk, I will present an overview of projects from the EmPRISE Lab that showcase fundamental advances in physical robot caregiving. I will highlight how we design stakeholder-informed systems with personalized contact-rich control policies and user functionality- and behavior-aware physical robot assistance. I will also share insights from deploying these systems with real users in real-world settings. Together, these efforts move us closer to building caregiving robots that are not only technically capable, but are also safe, deployable, and responsive to the real needs of people in care settings.
Bio: Tapomayukh "Tapo" Bhattacharjee is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Cornell University where he directs the EmPRISE Lab (https://emprise.cs.cornell.edu/). He completed his Ph.D. in Robotics from Georgia Institute of Technology and was an NIH Ruth L. Kirschstein NRSA postdoctoral research associate in Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington. His primary research interests are in the area of physical robot caregiving and physical human-robot interaction. He is the recipient of TRI Young Faculty Researcher Award'24, NSF CAREER Award'23, AFCEA 40 under 40 Award'22, and his work has won Best Paper Award at RSS’25, Best Paper and Student Paper Award Finalist and Best HRI Paper Award Finalist at ICRA’25, Best Systems Paper Award Finalist at HRI'24, Best Demo Award at HRI'24, Best RoboCup Paper Award at IROS’22, Best Paper Award Finalist and ABB Best Student Paper Award Finalist at IROS’22, Best Technical Advances Paper Award at HRI'19, and Best Demonstration Award at NeurIPS’18. His work has also been featured in many media outlets including the BBC, Reuters, New York Times, IEEE Spectrum, and GeekWire and his robot-assisted feeding work was selected to be one of the best interactive designs of 2019 by Fast Company.
This video is closed captioned.
![[Audio Descriptions] I Am CSE Overview](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/kz0b8RCsfKw/mqdefault.jpg "[Audio Descriptions] I Am CSE Overview
In this mash-up of footage from our collection of I Am CSE videos, four Allen School student researchers describe their work in artificial intelligence, robotics, accessibility, and more—and explain why the Allen School is a great place to do leading-edge research.
This video is in the process of being closed captioned.
A version of this video without audio descriptions is available here: https://youtu.be/u2C9HMSU6Qo")
