collaborators

6 papers

cs.RO2026

How Should I Pick a Foundation Model for My Robot? In Favor of a Community Evaluation Framework for Social Robots

Eric Nichols, Alva Markelius, Hatice Gunes

Researchers who seek to build social robot applications on foundation models are faced with a difficult question: how should we pick a model? Public leaderboards offer little guida…

cs.RO2026

Designing Social Robots for Inclusive Child Wellbeing Assessment: Insights from Communities Supporting Developmental Language Disorder and Forced Migration

Fethiye Irmak Dogan, Yue Lou, Alva Markelius +8

Assessing children's wellbeing and mental health can be particularly challenging for children experiencing communication barriers, such as children with Developmental Language Diso…

cs.RO2026

Designing Social Robots with Ethical, User-Adaptive Explainability in the Era of Foundation Models

Fethiye Irmak Dogan, Alva Markelius, Hatice Gunes

Foundation models are increasingly embedded in social robots, mediating not only what they say and do but also how they adapt to users over time. This shift renders traditional ``o…

cs.HC2025

Social Robotics for Disabled Students: An Empirical Investigation of Embodiment, Roles and Interaction

Alva Markelius, Fethiye Irmak Doğan, Julie Bailey +3

Institutional and social barriers in higher education often prevent students with disabilities from effectively accessing support, including lengthy procedures, insufficient inform…

cs.AI2025

Cognitive Science-Inspired Evaluation of Core Capabilities for Object Understanding in AI

Danaja Rutar, Alva Markelius, Konstantinos Voudouris +2

One of the core components of our world models is 'intuitive physics' - an understanding of objects, space, and causality. This capability enables us to predict events, plan action…

cs.HC2025

Stakeholder Perspectives on Whether and How Social Robots Can Support Mediation and Advocacy for Higher Education Students with Disabilities

Alva Markelius, Julie Bailey, Jenny L. Gibson +1

This paper presents an iterative, participatory, empirical study that examines the potential of using artificial intelligence, such as social robots and large language models, to s…