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!
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
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!
DREU recipient Adya Bharadwaj presented at the OneUSF Summer Undergraduate Research Symposium!
Dr. Zhao Han will chair a paper session in RO-MAN 2026: TuA05 Manipulation, Teleoperation & Handovers I. See you in Fukuoka, Japan from 10:50-12:50 on Tuesday, August 25!
UMass Amherst student Adya Bharadwaj had just started her DREU at the RARE Lab at USF.
Our full paper was accepted to IEEE RO-MAN 2026: “Understanding Dentists? and Patients? Perspectives on Dentistry Robots: An Exploratory Study in Dentist-Patient-Robot Interaction”! Congrats to Ashley, Yixi, Hong, and Minh Ha!
Dr. Zhao Han was selected as a mentor in the CRA-WP Distributed Research Experiences for Undergraduates (DREU) with $10,000 to be distributed to a matched mentee!
Research
Research focuses on interdisciplinary human-robot interaction (HRI), involving robotics, AI, augmented reality (AR), cognitive science, and psychology… See Research Overview →
