Carol Menassa
University of Michigan, MI·Engineering
Buildings, streets and worksites are often hard to use for many of the people in them. This research asks how technology can be designed around people's needs: wheelchair users moving independently through cities, and construction workers sharing physically demanding jobs with robots.
- Fields
Engineering
Computer Science
Social Science
- Topics
accessibility
wheelchair navigation
assistive technology
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Sep 2027
What they work on
- Identify, through participatory design with an embedded cohort of wheelchair users, the factors that determine whether an end-to-end mobility system succeeds for people with physical disabilities.
- Integrate new navigation and maneuvering algorithms into a user-centered autonomous wheelchair mobility system and evaluate it in lab and field human factors studies in the Ann Arbor–Ypsilanti area.
- Examine how to strengthen the partnership between users and the mobility system, and which psychological, social and economic factors promote its adoption in communities.
- Enable construction workers to train and supervise robot assistants through direct physical interaction and virtual supervision by combining interactive task learning, mixed reality and reinforcement learning.
- Develop education and professional development programs that help construction workers upskill for human–robot partnerships, tested with industry partners at work sites and training facilities.
More about the research
Both projects combine algorithms and robotics with participatory, human-centered study of how people would use and adopt these systems.
Why it matters
Wheelchair users could gain more independent and safer travel through accessible navigation and maneuvering support. Cities could use the results to build the mobility needs of people with physical disabilities into their master plans. Construction workers could avoid chronic pain and early retirement if robots take on strenuous tasks under human direction. This could also open construction jobs to people of diverse abilities.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
SCC-IRG Track 1: Advancing Human-Centered Sociotechnical Research for Enabling Independent Mobility in People with Physical Disabilities
NSF · Oct 2022 – Sep 2027
FW-HTF-R: Collaborative Research: Partnering Workers with Interactive Robot Assistants to Usher Transformation in Future Construction Work
NSF · Jan 2022 – Dec 2026
Closest labs
Jingang Yi
Rutgers University-New Brunswick, NJ·Engineering
Develop machine learning methods for real-time recognition of construction workers' activities and estimation of their body posture, using wearable sensors.
Patricio Vela
Georgia Institute of Technology, GA·Engineering
Develop an instrument for measuring worker, robot and supervisor technology adoption and performance through a grounded theory study of collaborative robotics in industry.
Cagdas Onal
Worcester Polytechnic Institute, MA·Engineering
Develop a modular, origami-inspired continuum robot arm (CoBRA) with customizable design algorithms, so the arm can be tailored to specific assistive tasks in homes and healthcare settings.
The school
University of Michigan: 124 labs on PI Pages, $2.1B a year on research, 963 research doctorates a year.
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