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David Porfirio, Ph.D.

NRC Postdoctoral Research Associate
U.S. Naval Research Laboratory

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About Me

My goal is for robot programming to be accessible to everyone.

To that end, I design software and hardware interfaces that capture developer intent and fill in the pieces towards robotic applications that can be deployed at home and in the workplace.

My postdoc advisor is Dr. Laura Hiatt in the Adaptive Systems Section at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory.

During my Ph.D., I was co-advised by Bilge Mutlu and Aws Albarghouthi. I was additionally mentored by Allison Sauppé, Maya Cakmak, and Kevin Ponto.

News

11.23
My work on Goal-Oriented End-User Development of Robots has been accepted to HRI 2024!
10.23
My co-organizers and I successfully ran the AAAI Fall Symposium, Unifying Representations for Robot Application Development!
6.23
Our proposal was accepted for an AAAI Fall Symposium, Unifying Representations for Robot Application Development!
3.23
🏅 I presented my work at the AAAI Spring Symposium Series and received a best paper nomination!
3.23
I presented a full paper at HRI 2023, Sketching Robot Programs On the Fly!
12.22
My full paper and late-breaking report were accepted at HRI 2023!

Projects

polaris

POLARIS

HRI 2024 paper


Exploring end-user development of robot programs in terms of goal predicates.
isl

INTERACTION SPECIFICATION LANGUAGE

UR-RAD 2023 symposium website

RO-MAN 2023 paper

AAAI Spring Symposium 2023 paper


Standardizing robot application development via a common, intermediate representation.
tabula

TABULA

HRI 2023 paper, video, code


Facilitating on-the-fly robot application development through a combination of sketching and spoken language.
crowdsourcing interface

CROWDSOURCING TASK TRACES

HRI 2023 LBR paper, video, code+data+study


Collecting examples of step-by-step tasks through an easy-to-use crowdsourcing interface.
figaro

FIGARO

CHI 2021 paper, video, code


Figaro is a tabletop programming-by-demonstration interface for HRI. Play out what you want the robot to do with figurines, and Figaro will assemble an executable program!
repair

TRANSFORMING ROBOT PROGRAMS

CHI 2020 paper, video, code


We developed an approach for modifying robot programs based on user interaction. The robot stores interaction traces for each user and incrementally learns repairs!
synthe

SYNTHÉ

UIST 2019 paper, video, code


Grab a partner and act out a human-robot social interaction while Synthé records you. Synthé will then assemble a fully executable program to run on a robot!
rover

ROVER

🏆 UIST 2018 (Best Paper) paper, video, code


A classic human-robot interaction visual programming environment with a twist—RoVer verifies your program against a set of social norms!