POSTED: 09 Jan, 2026

As we wrap up 2025, Program 2: Human–Robot Interaction (HRI) reflects on a year of strong collaboration, impactful research, and industry‑embedded outcomes that are shaping how humans and robots work together. The program led by Co-leads, Prof Markus Rittenbruch and A/Prof Jared Donovan with postdoc Dr Valeria Macalupú had an amazing year with:

• Deep industry collaboration
  • The creation of an industry‑ready toolkit translating HRI insights into actionable design requirements collaborating with industry partners to test and validate the framework.
  • Continued collaboration with Cook Medical, including a PhD placement for James Dwyer.
  • Further development of tools initially created with one partner into assets used across multiple organisations and universities
• Research excellence
  • 7 conference papers (DIS, CHI, HRI, IEEE CASE) and 5 journal publications, including Scientific Reports and Construction Robotics
  • Best Demo Award at HRI’25 for James Dwyer
  • Seed funding secured from the QUT Design Lab to launch new work on Design Affordances in HRI
• New projects and methods
  • New Intention Visualisation research project led by Markus Rittenbruch with Research Assistant, Dr Wei Win Loy Ph.D.
  • Development of reflective and transferable research tools, including Visualising Your Research Positioning workshops, led by Dr Valeria Macalupú
  • Continued momentum on design‑led HRI methods that extend beyond the Centre’s lifespan
• Cross‑university and cross‑disciplinary collaboration
  • Shared teaching, tools and datasets across QUT, University of Technology Sydney and other partners

Huge thanks to our researchers, HDRs, postdocs and industry partners for another year of thoughtful, human‑centred robotics research with real‑world impact.