Karthik Mahadevan

Karthik Mahadevan

Postdoctoral Associate

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

About

I am currently a Postdoctoral Associate at MIT. I completed my Ph.D. in Computer Science at the University of Toronto. My research interests lie in how we can facilitate interactions between humans and robots. My Ph.D. research was supported by the NSERC CGS-D Fellowship and the Google PhD Fellowship. My work is regularly published at top human-computer interaction venues including CHI, HRI, and UIST, where I have received 2 best paper awards and 1 honorable mention award. I have also spent time in industry research labs including at Google DeepMind, Meta Reality Labs, Autodesk Research, and Honda Research Institute.

Posts

Received Best Paper Award at HRI 2025!

Our work, ImageInThat: Manipulating Images to Convey User Instructions to Robots, received a Best Paper Award (Technical Track) at this year’s HRI!
Mar 7, 2025

Paper accepted to RA-L journal and will appear at IROS 2025!

This work was led by the brilliant Bingjian Huang.
Feb 23, 2025

Paper accepted to HRI 2025!

Dec 2, 2024

Received Best Paper Award at HRI 2024!

Our work, Generative Expressive Robot Behaviors using Large Language Models, received a Best Paper Award (Technical Track) at this year’s HRI!
Mar 14, 2024

Paper accepted to HRI 2024!

The work I conducted while working as a student researcher at Google Deepmind has been accepted to HRI 2024.
Nov 22, 2023
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Publications

Bingjian Huang, Zhecheng Wang, Qilong Cheng, Siyi Ren, Antonio Alvarez Valdivia, Karthik Mahadevan, Daniel Wigdor (2025). AeroHaptix: A Wearable Vibrotactile Feedback System for Enhancing Collision Avoidance in UAV Teleoperation. IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, 2025.

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Karthik Mahadevan, Blaine Lewis, Jiannan Li, Bilge Mutlu, Anthony Tang, Tovi Grossman (2025). ImageInThat: Manipulating Images to Convey User Instructions to Robots. In Proceedings of the ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), 2025.
Best Technical Paper (Top 1%).

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Karthik Mahadevan, Jonathan Chien, Noah Brown, Zhuo Xu, Carolina Parada, Fei Xia, Andy Zeng, Leila Takayama, Dorsa Sadigh (2024). Generative Expressive Robot Behaviors using Large Language Models. In Proceedings of the ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), 2024.
Best Technical Paper (Top 1%).

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Karthik Mahadevan, Qian Zhou, George Fitzmaurice, Tovi Grossman, Fraser Anderson (2023). Tesseract: Querying Spatial Design Recordings by Manipulating Worlds in Miniature. In Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), 2023.

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Jiannan Li, Mauricio Sousa, Karthik Mahadevan, Bryan Wang, Paula Akemi Aoyagui, Nicole Yu, Angela Yang, Ravin Balakrishnan, Anthony Tang, Tovi Grossman (2023). Stargazer: An Interactive Camera Robot for Capturing How-To Videos Based on Subtle Instructor Cues. In Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), 2023.

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Rachel Phinnemore, Mohi Reza, Blaine Lewis, Karthik Mahadevan, Bryan Wang, Michelle Annett, Daniel Wigdor (2023). Creepy Assistant: Development and Validation of a Scale to Measure the Perceived Creepiness of Voice Assistants. In Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), 2023.

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Karthik Mahadevan, Yan Chen, Maya Cakmak, Anthony Tang, Tovi Grossman (2022). Mimic: In-Situ Recording and Re-Use of Demonstrations to Support Robot Teleoperation. In Proceedings of the ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST), 2022.

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Karthik Mahadevan, Maurício Sousa, Anthony Tang, Tovi Grossman (2021). “Grip-that-there”: An Investigation of Explicit and Implicit Task Allocation Techniques for Human-Robot Collaboration. In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), 2021.
Best Paper Honorable Mention (Top 5%).

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Ming Hou, Karthik Mahadevan, Lora Oehlberg, Sowmya Somanath, Ehud Sharlin (2020). Autonomous Vehicle-Cyclist Interaction: Peril and Promise. In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), 2020.

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Karthik Mahadevan, Elaheh Sanoubari, Sowmya Somanath, James E. Young, Ehud Sharlin (2019). AV-Pedestrian Interaction Design Using a Pedestrian Mixed Traffic Simulator. In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Designing Interactive Systems (DIS), 2019.

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Karthik Mahadevan, Sowmya Somanath, Ehud Sharlin (2018). Communicating Awareness and Intent in Autonomous Vehicle-Pedestrian Interaction. In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), 2018.

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