Natarajan Balaji Shankar
Papers
2
Total Citations
10
H-Index
2
About
Natarajan Balaji Shankar is a leading researcher at the intersection of safe autonomous systems and human-robot interaction. His work addresses a critical challenge in modern robotics: how to guarantee safety when robots rely on complex, third-party components and machine learning models. Shankar’s major contribution is the development of **SOTER**, a programming framework for safe robotics systems that uses runtime assurance to provide strong safety guarantees even when design-time certification is infeasible. This foundational work, published in 2018, has already garnered **8 citations** and is shaping how researchers approach verifiable autonomy. More recently, Shankar has expanded into child-robot interaction, contributing to the **JIBO Kids Corpus**, a unique speech dataset from 110 children aged 4-7 in classroom environments. This dataset, collected during letter and digit identification tasks and oral discourse exercises, is a vital resource for developing socially aware robots that can interact naturally with young users. By bridging formal safety methods with real-world social robotics, Shankar is helping to build a future where autonomous systems are both trustworthy and engaging.
Research Focus
Key Achievements
Top Papers
- 1SOTER: Programming Safe Robotics System using Runtime Assurance.8 citations · 2018
- 2