Hochul Hwang

I am passionate about building robots that enhance mobility for people. Please refer to my CV for details.

hochul.jpg

I am a Ph.D. stduent in the Dynamic and Autonomous Robotics Systems Lab at the University of Massachusetts Amherst advised by Donghyun Kim. I am leading the development of a guide dog robot, with my research focusing on robot perception, planning, and human-robot interaction:

Perception and planning for safe long-term autonomy. Developing robust navigation and trajectory following models by learning generalizable representations from real-world human demonstrations, enabling safe and efficient guidance for human users.

Human-robot interaction for real-world deployment. Analyzing dynamic interactions between human-robot teams and factors such as trust and personalization to facilitate deployment beyond the development phase.

news

Jun 27, 2024 🏅 Our UR’24 paper has been nominated in the Finalist (top 9 papers of all submissions)!
Apr 27, 2024 🏆 Our CHI’24 paper has won the Best Paper Award (top 1% of all submissions)!
Apr 5, 2024 Our paper submitted to UR’24 got accepted!
Jan 24, 2024 Our paper submitted to CHI’24 got accepted! Take a moment to watch our preview video.
Jan 18, 2023 Our paper submitted to ICRA’23 got accepted! Please check out our demo video (with audio).

publications

  1. Lessons Learned from Developing a Human-Centered Guide Dog Robot for Mobility Assistance
    Hochul Hwang, Ken Suzuki, Nicholas A Giudice, and 3 more authors
    arXiv 2024
  2. Synthetic data augmentation for robotic mobility aids to support blind and low vision people
    Hochul Hwang, Krisha Adhikari, Satya Shodhaka, and 1 more author
    arXiv 2024
  3. 🏅 Is it safe to cross? Interpretable Risk Assessment with GPT-4V for Safety-Aware Street Crossing
    Hochul Hwang, Sunjae Kwon, Yekyung Kim, and 1 more author
    UR 2024
  4. 🏆 Towards Robotic Companions: Understanding Handler-Guide Dog Interactions for Informed Guide Dog Robot Design
    Hochul Hwang, Hee-Tae Jung, Nicholas A Giudice, and 3 more authors
    CHI 2024
  5. System Configuration and Navigation of a Guide Dog Robot: Toward Animal Guide Dog-Level Guiding Work
    Hochul Hwang, Tim Xia, Ibrahima Keita, and 4 more authors
    ICRA 2023
  6. Dynamic Object Avoidance using Event-Data for a Quadruped Robot
    Shifan Zhu, Nisal Perera, Shangqun Yu, and 2 more authors
    IROS IPPC Workshop 2023
  7. Highly sensitive capacitive pressure sensors over a wide pressure range enabled by the hybrid responses of a highly porous nanocomposite
    Kyoung-Ho Ha, Weiyi Zhang, Hongwoo Jang, and 5 more authors
    Advanced Materials 2021
  8. ElderSim: A Synthetic Data Generation Platform for Human Action Recognition in Eldercare Applications
    Hochul Hwang, Cheongjae Jang, Geonwoo Park, and 2 more authors
    IEEE Access 2021
  9. Computationally-robust and efficient prioritized whole-body controller with contact constraints
    Donghyun Kim, Jaemin Lee, Junhyeok Ahn, and 3 more authors
    IROS 2018
  10. Control scheme and uncertainty considerations for dynamic balancing of passive-ankled bipeds and full humanoids
    Donghyun Kim, Steven Jens Jorgensen, Hochul Hwang, and 1 more author
    Humanoids 2018
  11. Human behavior recognition system and method using hierachical class learning considering safety
    Junghyun Cho, Ig Jae Kim, and Hochul Hwang
    US Patent 2024