Publications

Conference Publications:

• J. Jaime, L. Rainbolt, I. Sathanur, T. Kessler Faulkner, and S. Srinivasa. Extending Robot-Assisted Feeding to Spoon-Based Foods with the Articutool: A Modular Active End-Effector. To be published in IROS 2026.
• K. Baraka, I. Idrees, T. Kessler Faulkner, E. Biyik, S. Booth, M. Chetouani, D. H. Grollman, A. Saran, E. Senft, S. Tulli, A. Vollmer, A. Andriella, H. Beierling, T. Horter, J. Kober, I. Sheidlower, M. E. Taylor, S. Van Waveren, X. Xiao. Human-Interactive Robot Learning: Definition, Challenges, Recommendations. ACM Transactions on Human-Robot Interaction 2025.
• A. Nanavati*, E. K. Gordon*, T. Kessler Faulkner, B. Zhu, T. Schrenk, J. Ko, A. Kashyap, R. Karim, H. Bolotski, R. Scalise, H. Song, R. Qu, M. Cakmak, S. S. Srinivasa. Lessons Learned from Designing and Evaluating a Robot-Assisted Feeding System for Out-of-Lab Use. HRI 2025. Best Systems Paper Award Finalist.
• E.K. Gordon*, A. Nanavati*, R. Challa, B. Zhu, T. A. Kessler Faulkner, and S. Srinivasa. Towards General Single-Utensil Food Acquisition with Human-Informed Actions. CoRL, 2023.
• T. A. Kessler Faulkner and A. L. Thomaz, “Using Learning Curve Predictions to Learn from Incorrect Feedback.” International Conference on Robotics and Automation. ICRA 2023.
• T. A. Kessler Faulkner, E. S. Short, and A. L. Thomaz, “Interactive Reinforcement Learning with Inaccurate Feedback.” IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation. ICRA 2020.
• M. L. Chang, T. A. Kessler Faulkner, T. B. Wei, E. S. Short, G. Anandaraman, A. L. Thomaz, “TASC: Teammate Algorithm for Shared Cooperation.” IROS 2020.
• T. A. Kessler Faulkner, R. A. Gutierrez, E. S. Short, G. Hoffman, and A.L. Thomaz, “Active Attention-Modified Policy Shaping.” AAMAS 2019.
• T. A. Kessler Faulkner, E. S. Short, and A.L. Thomaz, Policy Shaping with Supervisory Attention Driven Exploration. IROS 2018.
• T. A. Kessler Faulkner, S. Niekum, and A. Thomaz, Asking for Help Effectively via Modeling of Human Beliefs. Companion of the 2018 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (pp. 149-150). ACM.
• T. A. Kessler Faulkner, W. Brackenbury, and A. Lall, ‘K-regret queries with nonlinear utilities’, Proceedings of the Very Large Database Endowment, vol. 8, no. 13, pp. 2098-2109, 2015.

Refereed Workshops, Posters, and Demos:

• A. Nanavati*, E. K. Gordon*, T. Kessler Faulkner, B. Zhu, T. Schrenk, J. Ko, A. Kashyap, R. Karim, H. Bolotski, R. Scalise, H. Song, R. Qu, M. Cakmak, S. S. Srinivasa. Lessons Learned from Designing and Evaluating a Robot-Assisted Feeding System for Out-of-Lab Use. RSS 2026 Workshop on Human-centric Mobile Manipulation. 2026.
• L. Rainbolt*, I. Sathanur*, J. Jaime, T. Kessler Faulkner, and S. Srinivasa. Study in Spoons. HRI workshop on Robots for Care, 2026.
• E.K. Gordon*, R.K. Jenamani*, A. Nanavati*, Z. Liu, H. Bolotski, R. Karim, D. Stabile, A. Kashyap, B.H. Zhu, X. Dai, T. Schrenk, J. Ko, T. A. Kessler Faulkner, T. Bhattacharjee, and S. Srinivasa. An Adaptable, Safe, and Portable Robot-Assisted Feeding System. HRI Companion, 2024. Best Demo Award Winner.
• A. Nanavati*, M. Pascher*, V. Ranganeni, E.K. Gordon, T. A. Kessler Faulkner, S. Srinivasa, M. Cakmak, P. Alves-Oliveira, and J. Gerken. Multiple Ways of Working with Users to Develop Physically Assistive Robots. HRI workshop on Assistive Application, Accessibility, and Disability Ethics, 2024.
• E. K. Gordon, T. A. Kessler Faulkner, S. Srinivasa, “Balancing Flexibility and Precision in Assistive Food Manipulation.” Presented at the Assistive Manipulation Workshop at the 2023 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI). 2023.
• R. Mirsky, K. Baraka, T. A. Kessler Faulkner, J. Hart, X. Xiao, H. Yedidsion, I. Idrees, and E. K. Gordon. (2023, March). 2nd Workshop on Human-Interactive Robot Learning (HIRL). In Companion of the 2023 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (pp. 947-949).
• R. Mirsky, K. Baraka, T. A. Kessler Faulkner, J. Hart, H. Yedidsion, and X. Xiao. (2022, March). Human-Interactive Robot Learning (HIRL). In 2022 17th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) (pp. 1278-1280). IEEE.
• T. A. Kessler Faulkner and A. L. Thomaz, “Interactive Reinforcement Learning from Imperfect Teachers.” Companion of the 2021 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction. 2021.
• T. Wei, T. A. Kessler Faulkner, Andrea L. Thomaz, “Policy Shaping in Continuous State Spaces.” Presented at Knowledge Based Reinforcement Learning Workshop at the 29th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI 2020), January 2021.
• T. Wei, T. A. Kessler Faulkner, Andrea L. Thomaz, “Extending Policy Shaping to Continuous State Spaces.” Presented at AAAI-21 Student Abstract and Poster Program at the 35th Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-21), February 2021.
• T. A. Kessler Faulkner, E. S. Short, and A. L. Thomaz, “Towards Active Attention-Modified Policy Shaping.” Presented at Workshop on Human/Robot In-The-Loop Machine Learning, Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2018 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on. October 2018.
• T. A. Kessler Faulkner, S. Niekum, and A. Thomaz, “Robot Dialog Optimization via Optimization of Human Belief Updates”, Presented at Workshop on Robot Communication in the Wild, Robotics: Science and Systems (RSS). July 2017.
• T. A. Kessler Faulkner, S. Niekum, and A. Thomaz, “Robot Dialog Optimization via Modeling of Human Belief Updates.” Presented at CRA-W Conferences, April 2017.

PhD Thesis:

• T. A. Kessler Faulkner, Learning robot policies from imperfect human teachers [PhD Dissertation]. University of Texas at Austin, 2022.