On August 11, 2026, Zackory Erickson, an assistant professor at the Robotics Institute of Carnegie Mellon University, received the Carell Award from the National Science Foundation (NSF). This award supported her development of a new research framework called “Generative Simulation for Physical Human-Computer Interaction,” aimed at solving the problem of robots being unable to interact safely and effectively with humans due to a lack of real-world training data. This framework enables robots to learn from automatically generated highly realistic physical scenarios and to undergo extensive testing and adaptation before being applied in fields such as disability assistance robots, medical care, and collaborative manufacturing. Erickson stated that the goal of her research is to create a safer and more general human-computer interaction control system, provide open-source software benchmarks for community use, and train the next generation of experts using this award. Additionally, she plans to integrate her work into CMU’s robotics courses and high school summer programs, providing practical experience for developing AI for safe-critical systems.
Zackory Erickson, assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute, has received the NSF Carell Award. The project aims to address the challenge of robots lacking real training data for safe and effective interaction with humans, and will develop a new research framework called “Generative Simulation for Physical Human-Machine Interaction”. This framework enables robots to learn from automatically generated infinitely realistic physical interaction scenarios, which will be widely tested and adapted before application in areas such as disability assistance robots, medical care, and collaborative manufacturing. Erickson stated that the goal of the research is to create a safer and more general human-machine interaction control system, open-source software benchmarks for community use, and use the award to train the next generation of experts. Additionally, he has integrated his work into CMU’s robotics courses and high school summer programs, providing practical experience in developing AI for safe-critical systems.