Carly A. Mendenhall

Papers

Total Citations

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About

Carly A. Mendenhall is a researcher at the intersection of human-robot interaction, haptics, and robot learning. Her work reimagines how humans teach robots by making the learning process more transparent and intuitive. Mendenhall’s key contribution is the development of haptic displays that wrap around robot arms, enabling the robot to communicate its internal learning state through physical cues during kinesthetic teaching. This innovation addresses a critical gap: while prior research focused on how robots learn, Mendenhall emphasizes the equally important need for human teachers to understand what their robot is learning in real time. Her most-cited paper, “Wrapping Haptic Displays Around Robot Arms to Communicate Learning” (2023), has already garnered 9 citations, with an earlier version (2022) adding 2 more. By transforming the robot arm itself into a communicative interface, Mendenhall’s work paves the way for more effective, collaborative human-robot teaching—making her a rising voice in the quest for transparent, interactive machine learning.