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About

Jack Vice is a robotics researcher whose work spans human-robot interaction, assistive and therapeutic robotics, and autonomous systems. He first gained significant recognition with his pioneering research on storytelling robots for pediatric rehabilitation, developing a sensor-equipped furry robot that children with disabilities could control using body movements tailored to their therapeutic goals. This work, which has accumulated nearly 150 combined citations across two publications, demonstrated how robotics could be creatively harnessed to motivate young patients and support clinical outcomes. Vice further established himself in the human-robot interaction community through his widely-cited analysis of the 2013 DARPA Robotics Challenge Trials, contributing valuable insights into how humanoid robots perform under degraded real-world conditions — a paper that has attracted over 100 citations. His research has since expanded into wearable interfaces for robotic control, evolutionary algorithm-driven locomotion for legged robots navigating complex terrain, and simulation frameworks for off-road autonomous navigation. Taken together, Vice's body of work reflects a sustained commitment to making robots more capable, accessible, and effective across both humanitarian and challenging physical environments, bridging the gap between theoretical robotics and real-world application.