\n Media contact:<\/strong> Brittany Steff, bsteff@purdue.edu<\/a> <\/p>\n <\/div>\n Note to journalists:<\/p>\n \n A video interview of Sooyeon Jeong is available on the\u00a0Associated Press portal<\/a>\u00a0or via\u00a0Google Drive<\/a>. Photos of Jeong and her research robots are available on\u00a0Google Drive<\/a>. <\/p>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. \u2014 Friendly robots, the ones people love to love, are quirky: R2-D2, C-3PO, WALL-E, BB-8, Marvin, Roz and Baymax. They\u2019re emotional, prone to panic or bossy, empathetic and able to communicate like humans do \u2014 even when<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":19457,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[263],"tags":[],"department":[],"source":[29],"purdue_today_topic":[],"coauthors":[77],"class_list":["post-19503","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-purdue-computes","source-purdue-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19503","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19503"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19503\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20339,"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19503\/revisions\/20339"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19503"},{"taxonomy":"department","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/department?post=19503"},{"taxonomy":"source","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/source?post=19503"},{"taxonomy":"purdue_today_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/purdue_today_topic?post=19503"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=19503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
An assistant professor of computer science, Jeong leads a lab of researchers who work at the intersection of human behavior and artificial intelligence. Her goal is to create robots that make the world a better place for humans. Her research has helped cancer patients, people with aphasia, hospitalized children and geriatric adults.<\/a> Now, new research projects, including a robot study buddy and a robot concierge, are improving the ways humans and robots communicate and collaborate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Jeong\u2019s research is on software, but she runs it on a variety of hardware robots \u2014 small, fubsy humanoid robots; robots that are a humanoid head with a face projected upon it; robots that don\u2019t resemble a living creature at all, like a Roomba; or AI agents that don\u2019t have a physical body and exist only as a software program that people communicate with inside a computer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cMy goal, and the goal of my research group, is to design robots and AI that can have socially and emotionally natural interactions with people,\u201d Jeong said. \u201cI want anything I make or design to have a measurable positive impact on people\u2019s lives.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n One way Jeong is working to help humans is by creating robot software that will help students learn\u00a0\u2014 or help anyone complete a task.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cFor a lot of people, working in a study group helps provide peer accountability,\u201d Jeong said. \u201cBut for some people, that can be difficult in terms of logistics or social anxiety. There are existing technologies like productivity apps that do things like block YouTube, but they\u2019re mostly prohibitory. They don\u2019t encourage or support you the way peers would. So we got interested in seeing if we could build a robot that would provide both companionship and support to help someone study and be productive.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Jeong and her team tested several different iterations of the robot. In one, the robot was merely present, pretending to work at its own task in parallel with a student studying or working on homework. In a second, the robot would periodically remind the student of the student\u2019s stated goals: \u201cRemember! You said you wanted to complete the exam study guide by 2 p.m.\u201d And in the third situation, the robot offered more emotional support, along the lines of an exercise instructor in a difficult class.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIn that third one, the robot would offer emotional support, saying things like, \u2018You\u2019re doing a great job! We can do this together!\u2019 \u201d Jeong said. \u201cIt would encourage the student to take short breaks, stretch, move around and then refocus.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n What the study found was that the successful strategy depended not just on the student\u2019s personality, but also on the student\u2019s mood that day, and even what subject they were studying and what they were trying to accomplish.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt was interesting; we had mixed and nuanced results from the study,\u201d Jeong said. \u201cSome of the students who participated said the robot should be a little sterner, should scold them if they got off task. But this also was a one-time experiment: That might change if they had repeated sessions with the robot. This has some interesting design implications for future work because the robot would need to be able to read the student\u2019s body language and decide what is going to work best in each situation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Putting people at ease is a huge hurdle for robots. A tired person wouldn\u2019t necessarily confide about a hard day to the toaster, after all. But that person might very well talk to the cat. Or even a fish. Jeong is trying to create a robot that\u2019s more like the cat and less like the toaster. More like another person would be even better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Jeong explains that robots don\u2019t just need to listen to what a person is saying; they need to engage in active listening. They need to mirror behavior and tone and understand how to react and respond.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One project Jeong\u2019s lab is tackling is understanding the best way for robots to respond to conversation from a human<\/a>. Active listening does not just mean sitting in silence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cMany of the robot assistants people are used to \u2014 Siri, Alexa, Google \u2014 are discrete in their interactions with humans,\u201d Jeong said. \u201cYou ask them a question, and they give you the answer. But the way people interact with one another is very different. As I\u2019m talking, you\u2019re nodding, and saying \u2018right\u2019 and responding. These things are called backchannels, and they\u2019re part of how we as humans keep a conversation going, how I know you\u2019re really listening. We are working on how to generate appropriate backchannels for robots to use in conversations.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Not only is nonverbal communication like a backchannel signaling an advanced social cue, it is also a staggeringly difficult programming task. Jeong and her team are using large language models and recordings of human voices and communications to identify changes in rhythm, pitch and wording in conversations to teach computers what they call empathetic listening behaviors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThese robots and AI agents really need social and emotional intelligence to help people,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd we\u2019ve found that the more empathetic listening behavior we can implement, the more personalized support we\u2019re able to provide to people, whether it\u2019s in a health care, therapeutic or an educational setting. When people are more comfortable, the robot is more able to help. As robots become more available in people\u2019s daily lives, we need to make sure they\u2019re helping in real ways, long term, in the real world.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Jeong\u2019s work is part of Purdue Computes<\/a>, a comprehensive initiative that spans computing departments, physical AI, quantum science and semiconductor innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Purdue University is a public research university leading with excellence at scale. Ranked among top 10 public universities in the United States, Purdue discovers, disseminates and deploys knowledge with a quality and at a scale second to none. More than 106,000 students study at Purdue across multiple campuses, locations and modalities, including more than 57,000 at our main campus locations in West Lafayette and Indianapolis. Committed to affordability and accessibility, Purdue\u2019s main campus has frozen tuition 14 years in a row. See how Purdue never stops in the persistent pursuit of the next giant leap \u2014 including its integrated, comprehensive Indianapolis urban expansion; the Mitch Daniels School of Business; Purdue Computes; and the One Health initiative \u2014 at https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/president\/strategic-initiatives<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\nThe ideal study buddy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Robot-interaction.jpg\" "\\"\\"")
Friends, robots, countrymen, lend me your ears<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
About Purdue University<\/h2>\n\n\n\n