Karthik Mahadevan

PhD student

University of Toronto

About

I am a PhD student in Computer Science at the University of Toronto, where I am supervised by Dr. Tovi Grossman and Dr. Anthony Tang. I am passionate about how we can design systems and techniques to support natural and intuitive human-robot interaction. Prior to joining the University of Toronto, I received my MSc in Computer Science at the University of Calgary where I studied how we can design autonomous vehicle-pedestrian interaction. I also hold a BSc in Electrical Engineering from the University of Alberta.

Interests

Human-Robot Interaction
Human-Computer Interaction

Education

PhD in Computer Science, 2023
University of Toronto
MSc in Computer Science, 2019
University of Calgary
BSc in Electrical Engineering, 2016
University of Alberta

Posts

3 papers accepted to CHI 2023!

3 papers accepted including one first author paper on querying spatial design recordings, a project I worked on during an internship at Autodesk Research. More details to follow.

Jan 13, 2023

Awarded Google PhD Fellowship in HCI

I am thrilled to announce that I have been named a Google PhD Fellowship in HCI to support my thesis work on human-robot collaboration.

Sep 1, 2022

Paper accepted to UIST 2022!

Initial details below.

Jun 25, 2022

Best Paper Honorable Mention Award at CHI 2021

Ecstatic to announce that our CHI 2021 paper has received a Best Paper Honorable Mention Award. Congrats to all the co-authors!

Mar 24, 2021

Paper accepted to CHI 2021!

The first paper of my dissertation work has been accepted to CHI 2021, with co-authors Maurício Sousa, Anthony Tang and Tovi Grossman. Preprint and video below.

Dec 12, 2020

See all posts

Publications

Karthik Mahadevan, Yan Chen, Maya Cakmak, Anthony Tang, Tovi Grossman

October 2022 In Proceedings of the ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST), 2022.

Mimic: In-Situ Recording and Re-Use of Demonstrations to Support Robot Teleoperation

A novel system that enables teleoperators to demonstrate and save robot trajectories as templates and later re-use them to execute the same action in new situations.

PDF Video

Karthik Mahadevan, Maurício Sousa, Anthony Tang, Tovi Grossman

May 2021 In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), 2021.

“Grip-that-there”: An Investigation of Explicit and Implicit Task Allocation Techniques for Human-Robot Collaboration

Mapping a design space of explicit and implicit task allocation techniques for use in ad-hoc human-robot collaboration.

PDF Video

Ming Hou, Karthik Mahadevan, Lora Oehlberg, Sowmya Somanath, Ehud Sharlin

April 2020 In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), 2020.

Autonomous Vehicle-Cyclist Interaction: Peril and Promise

Studying the future interaction of autonomous vehicles and cyclists through a novel simulator.

PDF

Karthik Mahadevan, Elaheh Sanoubari, Sowmya Somanath, James E. Young, Ehud Sharlin

June 2019 In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Designing Interactive Systems (DIS), 2019.

AV-Pedestrian Interaction Design Using a Pedestrian Mixed Traffic Simulator

Examining AV-pedestrian interaction through a novel simulator and in particular studying how pedestrians can interact with a mix of manually-driven, semi-autonomous, and autonomous vehicles.

PDF

Karthik Mahadevan, Sowmya Somanath, Ehud Sharlin

April 2018 In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), 2018.

Communicating Awareness and Intent in Autonomous Vehicle-Pedestrian Interaction

Studying how we can design interfaces to support autonomous vehicle-pedestrian interaction.

PDF