Women in Robotics: Human-Centered Robotics
Making robots collaborative, inclusive, and accessible.
As robotics becomes part of our everyday lives, the most profound innovations aren’t just about what machines can do — they’re about how humans and robots can understand, support, and learn from one another.
This October, we’re continuing our deeper dive into the 2025 Women in Robotics You Need to Know About list, celebrating five honorees each week. This week, we highlight leaders in Human-Centered Robotics — researchers and engineers making robotics collaborative, inclusive, and accessible.
Their work bridges the space between human intention and robotic action, teaching machines to read the world as we do through context, communication, and care.
Together, they’re redefining what progress looks like in robotics: not faster or stronger, but more thoughtful, inclusive, and connected.
Nicole Robinson
Dr Nicole Lee Robinson is the CEO of Lyro Robotics. Lyro is a robotics company that builds and deploys software for intelligent pick and pack systems using computer vision, deep learning and robotic systems. Prior to co-founding Lyro Robotics, her PhD involved deploying humanoid robots into industry spaces and finding new ways to improve human-robot teamwork. She has also been involved in fundamental and applied scientific research in academia for over 10 years. She is an Associate Investigator of Securing Antarctica’s Environmental Future (SAEF) and her role is to use robotics to strengthen interdisciplinary science to secure Antarctica as a natural reserve. She is an Advisor to Monash Robogals, which aims to teach robotics to high-school students and to inspire greater participation by women in STEM. She was also named Women in AI’s APAC Grand Winner for 2024.
Dimitra Gkatzia
Dimitra Gkatzia is an associate professor at Edinburgh Napier University specialising in natural-language generation (NLG) and human-robot interaction. She co-leads Scotland’s SICSA AI theme and works on multimodal data integration to help robots communicate more naturally.
Gkatzia developed machine-learning techniques for summarising time-series data during her PhD and founded the NLG4HRI workshop to bring together linguists and roboticists. She has earned best-paper awards and advocates for ethical, privacy-preserving AI.
Sabine Hauert
Sabine Hauert is professor of swarm engineering at the University of Bristol and a leading expert on swarm robotics. After working at MIT, Carnegie Mellon University and EPFL, she established a research program exploring how large numbers of simple robots can perform complex tasks in nanomedicine and environmental monitoring.
Hauert co-founded and serves as president of Robohub.org, one of the world’s most widely read robotics news platforms. She sits on the Royal Society’s machine-learning working group and is an active science communicator, regularly speaking about the societal impact of swarms and campaigning for responsible AI.
Monica Anderson
Monica Anderson is an associate professor in computer science at the University of Alabama. Her research covers distributed autonomy, human-robot teaming and participatory robotics, and she has chaired the AAAI Robotics Workshop/Exhibition.
She also works on community asset mapping and computer-science education, aiming to broaden participation in robotics and computing. Anderson-Herzog mentors students and emphasises collaborative, human-centred robotics.
Shilpa Gulati
Shilpa Gulati is currently the Director of Safety and Compliance for Onboard Software at Waymo. She serves on the Safety Steering Committee as part of Waymo’s Safety Governance framework, helping to ensure the company continues to meet high standards of safety as its service expands across more cities. She also leads Waymo’s Road Rule Compliance program to ensure that the Waymo Driver understands applicable Road Rules and behaves in a way that complies with them.
Previously, she was the Director of Behavior Prediction at Waymo. In this role, she led the team responsible for building the AI/ML algorithms to predict the behavior of other road users—a critical component of the onboard software that drives Waymo’s autonomous vehicles. Before Waymo, Shilpa led teams solving Planning and Prediction problems for Autonomous Vehicles at Nuro and Apple. Shilpa holds a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin.
Shilpa is an advocate for emerging women leaders, supporting them with strategic advice and tools to develop their careers so they can achieve their full potential and impact.
Wow, the 'thoughtfull, inclusive, and connected' part is wonderfull. Makes me so excited for AI's future!