Research Interests

The rapidly aging population in the US and the world provides a significant opportunity for researchers in Artificial Intelligence to develop assistive technology that can improve the quality of life of our aging population, while helping nurses to become more effective in their everyday activities. A particular challenge arises from the various cognitive, perceptual, and physical limitations of the elderly, which usually vary significantly from one individual to another.

The goal of Dr. Roy's research is to assist people who have cognitive and physical activity limitations through interactive, intelligent robotic devices. He is one of the developers of two such implemented systems, the mobile robots Flo and Pearl.

Dr. Roy's research has focussed technically on the problems that result from uncertainty in the world, such as sensor noise or unpredictable action outcome. Probabilistic, decision-theoretic models have proven to be ideally suited for state estimation in the face of uncertainty; Dr. Roy believes that such models can be equally useful for planning and managing human-robot interactions.

Dr. Roy received a B. Sc. in Physics and an M. Sc. in Computer Science from McGill University, and a Ph. D. in Robotics from Carnegie Mellon University.