Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute have built a caregiving robot that doesn’t just follow pre-programmed motions but actually talks with people and adjusts what it does based on their spoken feedback.(CMU Robotics Institute)

At a retirement community near CMU, residents interacted with a robotic arm designed to assist with simple physical tasks. What made this robot different was its ability to speak its intentions, listen to people’s responses, and adjust on the fly. For example, when a resident asked the robot to scratch an arm with “a little more pressure,” the robot understood the request, confirmed it verbally, and changed how it moved.(Carnegie Mellon University)

The project, called Bidirectional Human-Robot Communication for Physical Human-Robot Interaction, comes from CMU’s Robotic Caregiving and Human Interaction lab. The idea is simple but powerful: most people communicate naturally through speech, so why not make robots that communicate in the same way? By grounding speech in its actual movement plans and actions, the robot can avoid confusion and make collaboration feel more intuitive.(CMU Robotics Institute)

Instead of just narrating what it plans to do, the system lets the robot listen and adapt to feedback. If someone comments that a movement or pressure feels off, the robot can ask follow-up questions to clarify and get it right. This selective listening focuses the robot on task-relevant input and ignores casual conversation that doesn’t matter for the job at hand.(Carnegie Mellon University)

The team credits recent advances in large language models for enabling better understanding of natural speech, even when instructions are vague or context-dependent. They also point out that when a robot explains what it’s doing and why, people feel more comfortable working with it. That trust matters if robots are ever going to be used widely in caregiving or other close-contact roles.(CMU Robotics Institute)

This work was funded by Honda R&D Americas and accepted to the 2026 Human-Robot Interaction conference.(Carnegie Mellon University)

Vraj Parikh