We design intelligent forms of interaction that assist people, especially people with disabilities. Our work spans human-robot and human-computer interaction, social and assistive robots, brain-computer interfaces, and touchless and multimodal interaction.
Social robots as mediators in therapy for autistic children, as companions for older adults, and as guides that make small museums accessible.
EEG and pupillary response let people with ALS communicate and control phones, tablets, robots and smart home devices.
Wolly, a robot co-designed with primary school children, and robotics lessons for school classes visiting the department.
How people respond to robots that show empathy, align with the user's emotions, and express emotion through body language, personality and memory.
Robot-assisted therapy for autistic children, support for older adults at home, sign language with Pepper, and robot guides for accessible museums.
BCIs that combine EEG and pupillary response for people with ALS, plus touchless interaction and coordinated speech, touch and visual cues.
Robots and interfaces that adapt to each user's behaviour, preferences and emotions, including theory-of-mind models and LLM-based interaction.
Robots co-designed with children and robotics lessons for schools, such as the "Bambini e Bambine: un giorno all'università" days with the City of Turin.
Brain-computer interfaces for controlling robots
People wear an EEG headset and a wristband sensor, and control robots with their brain signals. Each person gets their own calibration: the system learns a two-way distinction between mental states, such as concentrating and relaxing, and turns it into robot commands. The project is aimed at human-robot interaction for people with memory impairments.
Social Robots in Education: Weaving Networks & Opening Paths
SOROBED brings together international research groups to explore social and telepresence robots in education, focusing on accessibility, personalized interaction and inclusive learning. The project builds a collaborative research network, promotes student exchanges and joint studies, and develops shared research directions, with particular attention to rural education and intercomprehension.
AI and social robotics for inclusive healthcare
FEEL EVEN BETTER develops an LLM-powered social robot to support medical consultations for autistic people, with a focus on hormonal and metabolic health. The project combines participatory design, specialized language models and multimodal human–robot interaction to improve symptom communication and support clinical decision-making. The system will be integrated with Pepper and evaluated with autistic users for usability, trust and accessibility.
Social robots for accessibility in small museums
Social and telepresence robots guide visitors with multilingual speech, text and multimedia, and let people with reduced mobility visit remotely. Field trials take place in three museums in Turin, Sestriere and Pragelato.
Robot-assisted therapy for medical visits
A social robot mediates serious games and video modeling, so that autistic children can practise communication before specialist visits. Families can continue the training at home.
AI speech analysis for early diagnosis of language disorders
Software that transcribes the spontaneous speech of children aged 3.6 to 6.5, classifies phonetic-phonological and morphosyntactic patterns, and gives speech therapists evidence-based suggestions.
Artificial empathy in human-robot interaction
Pepper and NAO recognise the user's emotions and respond with empathy through speech, gaze and gesture. The project studies how users react, and the ethics of robots that simulate emotions.
Humanoid robotics for autism
Pepper simulates real-life social scenarios, so that autistic children with level 1 support needs can practise communication, emotional and practical skills. Therapists and caregivers get the interaction data.
BCIs and pupillary response for ALS
Combines brain-computer interfaces with the pupillary accommodative response, so that people with ALS can communicate even in advanced stages of the condition.
BCIs and AI for ALS
Machine learning decodes brain signals into commands for smartphones, tablets, robots and smart home systems. ALS users took part in the usability tests.
Seven robots help us develop and test our interaction technologies: humanoids, a telepresence robot, a desktop companion and a robot we designed ourselves. They take part in our experiments, therapy sessions, school lessons and public events.
Our newest robot: a full-body bipedal humanoid by Booster Robotics.
Our main platform for emotional body language, empathy studies and the robotics lessons we give to school classes.
Used in autism therapy, empathy studies and sign language (LIS). It also cooked against a chef at Buonissima 2025.
A personal robot for telepresence and guided visits.
An open-source desktop robot by Pollen Robotics and Hugging Face, for expressive and AI-driven interaction.
A service robot we program as a museum guide for visitors with disabilities.
Our own educational and affective robot, co-designed with primary school children.
Cristina Gena is a Full Professor at the Department of Computer Science of the University of Turin, where she leads the AIR Lab and is Deputy Head of Department for technology transfer and public engagement. Her research covers user modeling, adaptive systems and affective human-robot interaction. She is an affiliated researcher at the CONTACT unit of the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT), president of User Modeling Inc., and serves on the editorial boards of UMUAI, Behaviour & Information Technology and Frontiers.
We offer PhD topics in social robotics and HRI, and thesis projects with our robots. See the open positions or write to us.
Work with UsExplore thesis projects and PhD research topics in social robotics and human-robot interaction.
Interested in a thesis project or working with the lab? Contact us to discuss topics and availability.
We propose PhD topics on social robots that adapt to the user's behaviour, preferences and emotions, for assistive robotics (for example, autism), educational robotics and ambient assisted living. You will work in the AIR Lab with other PhD students, research fellows and robots.
UniTo PhD callsTeach Pepper as many words of Italian Sign Language (LIS) as its body allows.
Develop the next version of Wolly, our educational and affective robot.
Study how people perceive emotions that a robot shows with body language and gestures.
Build user models for distinct robot personalities and study how traits and memory shape interaction. Master's level.
Program and test Sanbot as a museum guide for visitors with disabilities in a major Turin museum.
Train AI models that recognise pets' emotions and body language, so home robots can read their mood.
Formalise the Big Five model in an ontology and connect it to robot behaviour. Master's level.
Evaluate the Webots simulator for designing social interaction with NAO and Pepper.
We are part of the Department of Computer Science of the University of Turin, Italy.
Lab Address
Dipartimento
di
Informatica
Via Pessinetto 12, office #25, first floor
10134 Turin, Italy
Phone
+39 011 670 67 11
