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Interaction with the Physical World

Advances in low- and no-power sensing, communication and interaction technologies offer new possibilities for blending digital innovation with our physical environment. 

From gesture recognition that allows people to interact with objects in new ways, to low-power sensors that collect and transmit data about temperature, air quality, urban accessibility and more, our researchers are tapping into the potential of computation to transform how we experience the world around us.


Research Groups & Labs

Professor Dieter Fox and a student demonstrate a remote operated robotic arm attempting to pick up a block

Robotics and State Estimation Lab

We are interested in the development of computing systems that interact with the physical world in an intelligent way. To investigate such systems, we focus on problems in robotics and activity recognition.

Street scene overlaid with color-coded object recognition labels for depicted car, bicycle, vegetation, utility pole, and manhole cover

Makeability Lab

The Makeability Lab specializes in Human-Computer Interaction and applied machine learning for high-impact problems in accessibility, computational urban science, and augmented reality.


Allen School Faculty

Assistant Professor

Professor

Professor


Centers & Initiatives

The Science Hub supports a broad set of programs — including fellowships for doctoral students, collaboration among researchers and support for collaborative research events — designed to accelerate artificial intelligence (AI), robotics and engineering in the Seattle area.

The Transportation Data Equity Initiative (TDEI) aims to enhance the quality and accessibility of travel services by building open source data collection and vetting tools, transportation data digital infrastructure, and governance frameworks that enable public-private data sharing and interoperability. The TDEI is a project sponsored by The Complete Trip, an ITS4US Deployment Program.

Highlights


UW News

Allen School Ph.D. student Yael Eiger and professor Franziska Roesner discuss their research examining people’s experiences with technology during and after incarceration and the broader impacts of technology used for policing and post-release monitoring.

Allen School News

In their 2017 paper, Roesner and her co-authors were among the first to investigate end-user security and privacy perspectives on then-emerging smart home technologies and recommend ways to help users make more informed security decisions.

Allen School News

Itani, who works with Allen School professor Shyam Gollakota in the Mobile Intelligence Lab, was recognized for exceptional early-career research advancing AI systems for “superhuman” hearing.