The Advanced Telerobotics Research Laboratory at Kent State University is an innovation research laboratory focused on exploring the frontiers of telepresence robotics, tele-embodiment, autonomy and artificial intelligence.
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We build robots that people operate from a distance and Physical AI (AI that senses and acts in the real world through a robot) that works alongside them. Students from high school through doctoral study do the work on real hardware: humanoid, quadruped and social robots, robot arms and immersive teleoperation interfaces.
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About the lab Research, achievements, press kit and members. |
Getting started Lab rules, safety, research standards, tools and hardware for new members. |
Dev guidelines Style guides, copy-ready lint configs and Git practices. |
All things ROS 2 Concepts, distributions, installation, commands and debugging. |
| Area | What it means |
|---|---|
| Extending human presence | Robots people operate and inhabit at a distance: telepresence, tele-embodiment and immersive VR and AR teleoperation |
| Physical AI that works with people | Service robots, social robots and humanoids that sense, decide and act in real settings alongside people |
| Learning by building | Students at every level do research on real hardware and test it in competition |
| The next generation of innovators | Hands-on robotics and Physical AI programs for middle and high school students and their teachers |
| Project | What it is | Code |
|---|---|---|
| Expressive Motion | Learning expressive humanoid locomotion from monocular runway videos, on a Booster K1 humanoid | expressive-motion |
| Coffee Buddy | An interactive service robot for coffee shops with voice interaction, facial expressions and head tracking (ROS 2) | kami-head |
| PepperKit | A SoftBank Pepper robot stack that answers through a realtime large language model voice agent | PepperKit |
| VendoBot | A projection-augmented delivery robot for intent transparency and motion legibility, published in the HRI 2026 Companion proceedings | Paper |
| Unitree Go2 workspace | A ROS 2 workspace for the lab's Unitree Go2 robot dog: vision, human interaction and video streaming | go2_ws |
Earlier work
| Project | Years | Code |
|---|---|---|
| TeleBot-4R, the lab's telepresence robot, and its Meta Quest XR interface | 2023-2024 | TeleBot-4R · TeleBot-4R-XR |
| AARON, an AR system for spacesuit operations built for NASA SUITS | 2020, 2023 | |
| TeleBot-2 at the World Robot Summit in Tokyo | 2018 |
- ATR Lab design skill: the lab's brand system (logos, colors, fonts, templates and checking scripts) packaged as a Claude skill.
- ROSEnv: a ROS 2 project and dependency manager with persistent Docker environments and lockfiles, built by a lab member.
- Kent State students: read Getting started, then visit the lab website to find out how to join.
- Prospective graduate students: see the lab website and apply through Kent State University graduate admissions.
- Contributors: every repository follows the contributing guide and the code of conduct unless it has its own.
Advanced Telerobotics Research Laboratory · Department of Computer Science · Kent State University · Kent, Ohio