I am a Ph.D. Candidate at Cornell Tech supervised by Prof. Wendy Ju. My research
investigates how context shapes human‑robot interaction, with a focus on creating real‑world simulations that reveal how
people engage with robotic systems.
I design and deploy robotics systems in everyday environments to elicit authentic human responses, treating the real world itself as a testbed. Incorporating feedbacks from field deployment, my work seeks to improve the design of interactive systems in social spaces.
I design and deploy robotics systems in everyday environments to elicit authentic human responses, treating the real world itself as a testbed. Incorporating feedbacks from field deployment, my work seeks to improve the design of interactive systems in social spaces.
Latest News
- [June 2025] Returned to Toyota Research Institute for a second internship.
- [June 2025] Some new publications at CHI 2025!
- [Nov 2025] Gave a talk at the 2nd HRI International Symposium held by Naver Labs Europe.
- [May 2024] Start my summer internship at Toyota Research Institute.
- [May 2023] Presented our work Portobello at CHI and received an Honorable Mention Award!
- [May 2023] Gave a talk at Nokia Bell Labs Responsible AI Seminar.
Publications
-
THRI'25Making Sense of Robots in Public Spaces: A Study of Trash Barrel Robots.
Fanjun Bu, Kerstin Fischer, and Wendy Ju. -
CHI EA'25Boosting Visual Fidelity in Driving Simulations through Diffusion Models.
Fanjun Bu and Hiroshi Yasuda. -
CHI'25The People Behind the Robots: How Wizards Wrangle Robots in Public Deployments.
Hannah R. M. Pelikan, Fanjun Bu, and Wendy Ju. -
CHI'25The Robotability Score: Enabling Harmonious Robot Navigation on Urban Streets.
Matt Franchi*, Maria Teresa Parreira*, Fanjun Bu*, and Wendy Ju. -
ICSR'24ReStory: VLM-Augmentation of Social Human-Robot Interaction Datasets.
Fanjun Bu, and Wendy Ju. -
ICSR'24SSUP-HRI: Social signaling in urban public human-robot interaction dataset.
Fanjun Bu, and Wendy Ju. -
DIS'24Behind the Scenes of CXR: Designing a Geo-Synchronized Communal eXtended Reality System.
Sharon Yavo-Ayalon, Yuzhen Zhang, Ruixiang Han, Swapna Joshi, Fanjun Bu, Cooper Murr, Lunshi Zhou, and Wendy Ju.
Honorable Mention Award -
CHI EA'24Field Notes on Deploying Research Robots in Public Spaces
Fanjun Bu, Alexandra Bremers, Mark Colley, Wendy Ju. -
CHI'24Portobello: Extending Driving Simulation from the Lab to the Road.
Fanjun Bu, Stacey Li, David Goedicke, Mark Colley, Gyanendra Sharma, Wendy Ju.
Honorable Mention Award -
CHI'24Trash in Motion: Emergent interactions with robotic trashcans in a public square.
Barry Brown, Fanjun Bu, Ilan Mandel, Wendy Ju. -
HRI'23Trash Barrel Robots in the City.
Fanjun Bu*, Ilan Mandel*, Wen-Ying Lee, Wendy Ju. -
CHI'22XR-OOM: MiXed Reality driving simulation with real cars for research and design.
David Goedicke, Alexandra WD Bremers, Sam Lee, Fanjun Bu, Hiroshi Yasuda, Wendy Ju. -
CoRL'22Human-robot commensality: Bite timing prediction for robot-assisted feeding in groups.
Jan Ondras, Abrar Anwar, Tong Wu, Fanjun Bu, Malte Jung, Jorge Jose Ortiz, Tapomayukh Bhattacharjee. -
IEEE Access'21Object permanence through audio-visual representations.
Fanjun Bu, Chien-Ming Huang.
[Dataset] [Video] -
RAL'20Benchmark for bimanual robotic manipulation of semi-deformable objects.
Konstantinos Chatzilygeroudis, Bernardo Fichera, Ilaria Lauzana, Fanjun Bu, Kunpeng Yao, Farshad Khadivar, Aude Billard.
Teaching Assistantships
- [Spring 2024] CS5678 3D User Interface
- [Spring 2023] INFO5755/INFO6755/CS5755/CS675 Mobile Human Robot Interaction Design
TA Award - [Fall 2021] CS4750/CS5750/ECE4770/MAE4760.
Foundations of Robotics
TA Award
Press Coverage
- Staff, "These robotic trash cans were filmed to test human-robotic interactions. Watch what happened," CNN Business, April 12, 2023.
- Ayesha Rascoe, "Researchers released robot trash cans in NYC to see how people would react," National Public Radio (NPR), April 16, 2023.
- Patricia Waldron, "(Almost) everyone likes a helpful trash robot," Cornell Chronicle, April 19, 2023.
- Mike Snider, "Robots in the Big Apple: Robo-trash cans patrolling New York plaza make friends, creep out some," USA TODAY, April 15, 2023.
- 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.