Note: Alexis Block has transitioned from the institute (alumni).
Alexis E. Block is currently a guest scientist in the Haptic Intelligence department while she is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Biomechatronics Lab at the University of California with Veronica Santos. Alexis earned her doctorate degree from ETH Zurich in 2021. She received her bachelor's degree with honors in Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics and two minors in Mathematics and Engineering Entrepreneurship in 2016 from the University of Pennsylvania. The following year, 2017, she received her master's degree in Robotics, also from the University of Pennsylvania.
Alexis E. Block's doctoral research, HuggieBot, focused on social-physical human-robot interaction. She was a Center for Learning Systems (CLS) Doctoral Fellow. She started her research in July 2017 at MPI-IS in Germany. Block spent a year and a half in the Computer Science Department at ETH Zürich. Her two ETH co-advisors were Roger Gassert (Rehabilitation Engineering Laboratory) and Otmar Hilliges (Advanced Interactive Technologies). In January 2020 she rejoined her primary doctoral advisor, Dr. Katherine J. Kuchenbecker, and the rest of the Haptic Intelligence Department. She successfully defended her doctoral dissertation on 12 August 2021.
Alexis Block was recently selected to receive the Max Planck Society's Otto Hahn Medal for her doctoral dissertation; she is the first student from MPI-IS to win this prize from the new research direction of intelligent systems. She will go to Berlin in June to attend the Annual Meeting of the Max Planck Society to receive this honor. Alexis was also awarded a two-year postdoctoral computing innovation fellowship (NSF, CRA, and CCC funded) to support her research at UCLA. Block was named a 2020 Rising Star in Mechanical Engineering. She was selected as a 2018 HRI Pioneer, and elected and served as General Chair for HRI Pioneers 2019. She also co-founded the MPI Athena Group to support women in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, robotics, intelligent systems and related fields.
Alexis Block's research has been featured on several television programs, radio programs, and podcasts:
12 & 13 January 2022, PM Wissen, Servus TV: broadcast in Germany and Austria HuggieBot was featured in a short sequence in a film titled ``Wie funktioniert Unterricht per Avatar? (``How does teaching via avatar work?'')
21 July 2021, Women's Wealth: The Middle Way: Alexis was interviewed as the featured guest on the podcast. Her episode is entitled "Inventing her way to success", and features a roughly eleven-minute interview with Alexis.
12 July 2021, The Next Byte: an engineering podcast by Wevolver aired an episode discussing Alexis and her HuggieBot research called "26. Hugging Robots, Scalable Solar Fuel, & Non-Invasive Spinal Implants"
8 July 2021, The Current: A radio program on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation did a story about hugging and interviewed Alexis to learn about HuggieBot, why she made it, and how it would succeed after the pandemic.
7 April 2021, Trending in Enducation: Alexis was the featured guest on the podcast episode "Making a Robot that Hugs with Alexis Block" to talk about her recent HRI publication "The Six Hug Commandments: Design and Evaluation of a Human-Sized Hugging Robot with Visual and Haptic Perception"
26 May 2019, STEM on Fire: Interviewed Alexis on their podcast episode "Nothing Cooler than Being a Woman in STEM" to encourage high school juniors and seniors and college freshmen an sophomores to study STEM
16 June 2018, NPR: HuggieBot was the first question discussed during the Panel Questions segment of NPR's "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me" program.
15 June 2018, Paul Ross Show on TalkRadio: Alexis had an 11 minute interview with Paul Ross. It aired between 4:30-5:00 and begins about 8 minutes in.
A selection of Block's research featured in news articles:
ETH Globe (Swiss Magazine), June 2021: Robots for comfort and counsel also available in German as Der Roboter – dein Richter und Tröster (article begins on page 25 for both)
Beobachter (Swiss Magazine), 3 June 2021: Ein Plädoyer gegen die Vereinzelung
Entrepreneur.com, 10 March 2021: "What to do when people laugh at your idea"
TechXplore, 11 February 2021: "HuggieBot 2.0: A soft and human-size robot that hugs users on request"
SWR TV (German TV News Station), 16 January 2021: filmed and aired an interview with Alexis and Katherine featuring a live demo of HuggieBot 3.0
PM Magazin (German Science Magazine), December 2020: published an article titled "Touched by a Robot" about Alexis and HuggieBot 2.0
The New York Times, 16 October 2020: "When We Can Hug Again, Will We Remember How It Works?"
Double Helix Magazine, 15 October 2020: "The Comfort of Robot Hugs"
Stuttgarter Zeitung, 6 December 2019: "Ein Roboter spendet Trost"
The Robot Report, 27 May 2019: “ETH Zurich Researcher Works to Build Human-Machine Trust, One Robotic Hug at a Time"
NowThis Future Media, 30 August 2018: Created a short video using experimental footage of HuggieBot 1.0 with over 250,000 views
The Times, 12 June 2018: "Feel the Love with a Robo-Hug That's Better Than the Real Thing"
Geek.com, 12 June 2018: "This Robot Just Wants a Hug"
NBC News, 11 June 2018: "Why scientists are teaching this burly robot to hug"
Digital Trends, 7 June 2018: "Forget Roomba, your most important house robot could be the one that hugs you"
Boing Boing, 6 June 2018: "Why these scientists are teaching robots to give good hugs"
IEEE Spectrum, 5 June 2018: "The Importance of Teaching Robots to Hug"
HuggieBot 1.0
A video compilation created by IEEE Spectrum of experimental footage from the first HuggieBot experiment
Seth Meyers Opening Monologue
Starting at 0:50, Seth Meyers jokes about HuggieBot during his opening monologue of his show Late Night with Seth Meyers
NowThis Future Media
NowThis Future Media created a video compilation of footage and a summary of the paper published from the HuggieBot experiment.
The Six Hug Commandments Paper Presentation
This video overviews the creation of HuggieBot in "The Six Hug Commandments: Design and Evaluation of a Human-Sized Hugging Robot with Visual and Haptic Perception" a paper accepted and presented at the 2021 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction.
HuggieBot 3.0
A video compilation created by IEEE Spectrum of experimental footage from a HuggieBot 3.0 experiment