RARE Lab I-Corps team was awarded $3,000 travel grant for customer discovery!
Reality, Autonomy, and Robot Experience (RARE) Lab
Prof. Zhao Han leads the RARE lab in the Bellini College of Artificial Intelligence, Cybersecurity and Computing at the University of South Florida.
Mission
Our mission is to solve the grand challenges in human-centered robotics by designing and studying preferred robot interactions and capable robotic systems powered by AI.
Vision
We envision an era of interactive robots that provide superior robot experiences for humans to interact, collaborate, team up, and live with.
News
Reaching out for broader impacts–RARE Lab participated Automation Fest!
Dr. Zhao Han serves as an Associate Editor for ICRA 2026 under Human-Robot Interaction 2!
Dr. Zhao will serve as area chair (AC) for HRI 2027!
Dr. Zhao Han (PI), Dr. Hongdao Meng (PI), and RARE Lab Ph.D. student Sakina Rao (Entrepreneurial Lead) were just selected as members of the 2026 Inaugural Cybersecurity / Artificial Intelligence cohort of the I-Corps@USF program!
RARE Lab presented at 2026 IEEE ROMAN in Kitakyushu, Japan: Yixi and Ashley were presenting a full paper and Dr. Zhao Han was serving as a session chair!
Ph.D. student Sakina Rao has joined the RARE Lab. Welcome!
RARE Lab PhD student, Yixi Chen, was selected as student volunteer at IEEE ROMAN 2026!
Research
Research focuses on interdisciplinary human-robot interaction (HRI), involving robotics, AI, augmented reality (AR), cognitive science, and psychology… See Research Overview →
Recent Publications
Towards Contextual Robot Intent Explanation for Hierarchical Vision–Language–Action Collaboration
ICRA 2026 SRRA
Towards Leveraging Humans’ Implicit Interaction Cues for Fluent Human-Humanoid Interaction
ICRA 2026 SCR@Home
