I am a Ph.D. Candidate at Cornell Tech under the supervision of Prof. Wendy Ju. My research focuses on understanding how people interact with emerging technologies. In particular, I am interested in human-robot interaction and the challenges it presents. My approach involves utilizing the Wizard-of-Oz technique for in-the-wild deployments to simulate robots' autonomy and elicit natural interaction behaviors. By leveraging unique interaction data collected through the Wizard-of-Oz technique, I aim to bootstrap robots' social intelligence. Through my research, I aspire to provide valuable guidelines for the design of future technologies that seamlessly integrate into human environments.
Fanjun (Frank) Bu

Ph.D. Candidate

Computer Science Department
Cornell University, Cornell Tech

Google Scholar
Github

News

  1. [5/28] Start my summer internship at Toyota Research Institute.
  2. [5/14] Presented our work Portobello at CHI and received an Honoranle Mention Award!
  3. [3/25] Gave a talk at Nokia Bell Labs Responsible AI Seminar.

Publications

  1. Sharon Yavo-Ayalon, Yuzhen Zhang, Ruixiang Han, Swapna Joshi, Fanjun Bu, Cooper Murr, Lunshi Zhou, and Wendy Ju. 2024. Behind the Scenes of CXR: Designing a Geo-Synchronized Communal eXtended Reality System. In Designing Interactive Systems Conference (DIS '24). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 180–196. https://doi.org/10.1145/3643834.3660680 Honorable Mention Award
    2. [Paper]
  2. Fanjun Bu, Alexandra Bremers, Mark Colley, Wendy Ju. “Field Notes on Deploying Research Robots in Public Spaces”. In Extended Abstracts of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA ’24), May 11–16, 2024, Honolulu, HI, USA. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 6 pages.
    3. [Paper]
  3. Fanjun Bu and Wendy Ju. 2024. SSUP-HRI: Social Signaling in Urban Public Human-Robot Interaction dataset. In Workshop on Social Signal Modelling, March 11, 2024, Boulder, CO, USA. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 5 pages.
    4. [arXiv]
  4. Fanjun Bu, Stacey Li, David Goedicke, Mark Colley, Gyanendra Sharma, Wendy Ju. “Portobello: Extending Driving Simulation from the Lab to the Road”. In: Proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. 2024, pp. 1–13. Honorable Mention Award
    5. [Paper] [Video Demo]
  5. Barry Brown, Fanjun Bu, Ilan Mandel, Wendy Ju. “Trash in Motion: Emergent interactions with robotic trashcans in a public square”. In: Proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. 2024, pp. 1–15.
    6. [Paper]
  6. Fanjun Bu*, Ilan Mandel*, Wen-Ying Lee, Wendy Ju. “Trash Barrel Robots in the City”. In: Companion of the 2023 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction. HRI ’23. Stockholm, Sweden: Association for Computing Machinery, 2023, pp. 875–877.
    7. [Paper][Video]
  7. David Goedicke, Alexandra WD Bremers, Sam Lee, Fanjun Bu, Hiroshi Yasuda, Wendy Ju. “XR-OOM: MiXed Reality driving simulation with real cars for research and design”. In: Proceedings of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. 2022, pp. 1–13.
    8. [Paper]
  8. Jan Ondras, Abrar Anwar, Tong Wu, Fanjun Bu, Malte Jung, Jorge Jose Ortiz, Tapomayukh Bhattacharjee. “Human-robot commensality: Bite timing prediction for robot-assisted feeding in groups”. In: 6th Annual Conference on Robot Learning. 2022.
    9. [Paper]
  9. Fanjun Bu, Chien-Ming Huang. “Object permanence through audio-visual representations”. In: IEEE Access 9 (2021), pp. 131574–131582.
    10. [Paper] [Dataset] [Video]
  10. Konstantinos Chatzilygeroudis, Bernardo Fichera, Ilaria Lauzana, Fanjun Bu, Kunpeng Yao, Farshad Khadivar, Aude Billard. “Benchmark for bimanual robotic manipulation of semi-deformable objects”. In: IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters 5.2 (2020), pp. 2443–2450.
    11. [Paper]

Teaching Assistantships

  1. [Spring 2024] CS5678 3D User Interface
  2. [Spring 2023] INFO5755/INFO6755/CS5755/CS675 Mobile Human Robot Interaction Design
    3. TA Award
  3. [Fall 2021] CS4750/CS5750/ECE4770/MAE4760. Foundations of Robotics
    4. TA Award

Press

  1. Staff, "These robotic trash cans were filmed to test human-robotic interactions. Watch what happened," CNN Business, April 12, 2023.
  2. Ayesha Rascoe, "Researchers released robot trash cans in NYC to see how people would react," National Public Radio (NPR), April 16, 2023.
  3. Patricia Waldron, "(Almost) everyone likes a helpful trash robot," Cornell Chronicle, April 19, 2023.
  4. Mike Snider, "Robots in the Big Apple: Robo-trash cans patrolling New York plaza make friends, creep out some," USA TODAY, April 15, 2023.
  5. Evan Ackerman, "Humans (Mostly) Love Trash Robots > Simple robots wander NYC asking for trash and recycling, and it’s adorable," IEEE Spectrum, Mar 10, 2023.
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