The lab's public profile: what we research, what we have achieved, what we publish, a press kit for reporters and the people in the lab.
Advanced Telerobotics Research Laboratory · Department of Computer Science · Kent State University
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.
The lab's own published self-description, and the safe default whenever you need one sentence about the lab. Other lengths (most still drafts awaiting the director's approval) are in press-kit/boilerplates.md.
 Research From telepresence to Physical AI: pillars, current projects, platforms and past work. |
 Achievements A dated timeline of results, in the exact wording we may use. |
 Publications VendoBot at HRI 2026, the awarded papers and a selected list. |
 Press kit Boilerplates, fact sheet, director bio, logos and photo rules. |
 Members Who is in the lab, and how members submit their own profile. |
 Contact Address, email, website and the lab's verified channels. |
| If you are... | Start with | Then |
|---|---|---|
| A reporter or a Kent State editor | Press kit | Fact sheet, achievements |
| A prospective student | Research | Members, contact |
| A lab member | Members: submit your profile | Research |
| Writing about the lab (news post, slide, grant text) | Achievements for the allowed wording | Boilerplates |
| A coding agent | AGENTS.md | The page your task names |
| Item | Verified value |
|---|---|
| Name | Advanced Telerobotics Research Laboratory, the official long form; then "the lab". Short form in display only: ATR Lab |
| Home | Department of Computer Science, College of Sciences and Humanities, Kent State University, Kent, Ohio |
| Founded | 2017 (the lab opened in spring 2017) |
| Director | Jong-Hoon Kim, associate professor of computer science |
| Focus | Telepresence robotics, tele-embodiment, autonomy and artificial intelligence, moving toward Physical AI (AI that senses and acts in the real world through a robot) |
| Website | www.atr.cs.kent.edu |
Each line uses the wording the lab may print. Sources and dates are on the achievements page.
- HRI 2026: VendoBot, published in the HRI 2026 Companion proceedings (Edinburgh, March 2026).
- World Robot Summit, 2021: A lab team was selected as one of 11 finalists in the World Robot Summit Plant Disaster Prevention Challenge, the only team from the United States, The Kent Stater reported.
- NASA SUITS, 2020: A lab team was selected as one of the top 10 teams for the onsite NASA SUITS challenge.
- NASA SUITS, 2023: The lab's ATR_FLUX team built the second generation of AARON, an AR system for spacesuit operations. (AR, augmented reality, lays digital information over the real world.)
- Paper awards: Distinguished Paper Award, World Robot Summit Plant Disaster Prevention Challenge (remote participation), awarded to the ATR_Kent team, 2021; Best Conference Paper Award, IHCI 2020 (AARON); Best Paper, Robotics Track, IEMTRONICS 2020; Special Session Best Award, IHCI 2023.
- World Robot Summit, 2018: The lab demonstrated TeleBot-2 at the World Robot Summit in Tokyo.
- On campus: The lab is a node of Kent State's Design Innovation Hub.
- Open source: 55 public repositories on GitHub (ATR-Lab), counted Sept. 30, 2026.
| Project | What it is | Public code or paper |
|---|---|---|
| VendoBot | A projection-augmented delivery robot for improving intent transparency (showing people what the robot plans to do next) and motion legibility in service robots | HRI 2026 Companion paper |
| Coffee Buddy | An interactive service robot for coffee shop settings, with voice interaction, facial expressions and head tracking | ATR-Lab/kami-head |
| PepperKit | A SoftBank Pepper robot with a realtime LLM voice agent (an AI language model that listens and answers aloud) | ATR-Lab/PepperKit |
| Expressive Motion | Expressive walking for a Booster K1 humanoid, learned from video of a person walking (2026) | ATR-Lab/expressive-motion |
Platforms: SoftBank Pepper, Unitree Go2, Booster K1 humanoid, a Yahboom ROS 2 robot and a robot mower, plus the recent TeleBot generations TeleBot-3R and TeleBot-4R (with an XR interface for Meta Quest). Details and the matching repositories are in research.md.
- Undergraduate and graduate courses, including Human-Robot Interaction and Physical AI Agent (CS 4999X and CS 5999Y, to be offered in 2027).
- A summer research internship for high school students (2025 and 2026).
- A summer workshop on Physical AI and robotics for middle school students (2026).
| Item | Details |
|---|---|
| Website | www.atr.cs.kent.edu |
| Mailing address | Department of Computer Science, 241 Mathematical Sciences Building, 1300 Lefton Esplanade, Kent, OH 44242-0001 |
| Department of Computer Science (main office, not a lab line) | 330-672-9980 · office@cs.kent.edu |
| Lab location | Mathematical Sciences Building, Room 236 (second floor). Visits by appointment |
| Director's office phone | 330-672-9060 (Jong-Hoon Kim's office line) |
| Director | Jong-Hoon Kim, associate professor of computer science · jkim72@kent.edu · Kent State profile |
| Lab email | atrlab.kent@gmail.com. For recruiting, K-12 and sponsor questions: [program kent.edu address] |
| Media | Kent State University media relations: [UCM contact]. See the press kit |
| X | @atrlab_kent |
| @atr_lab | |
| YouTube | Advanced Telerobotics Research Laboratory channel |
| GitHub | ATR-Lab |
| Advanced Telerobotics Research Laboratory on LinkedIn | |
| Giving | [Giving URL: confirm designation] |
Items in [brackets] are not confirmed yet; please don't fill them in from other pages. See AGENTS.md.
| Path | What it holds | Read it when |
|---|---|---|
| research.md | Positioning, message pillars, projects, platforms, past work, programs | You need to describe what the lab does |
| achievements.md | Dated timeline with allowed wording and sources; what never to claim | You mention a result anywhere |
| publications.md | VendoBot, awarded papers, a selected IEEE-style list | You cite the lab's work |
| press-kit/ | Boilerplates, fact sheet, director bio, logos, photo rules, coverage log | A reporter, editor or event needs material |
| members/ | Director entry, member tables, profile form, conversion procedure | You join, leave or update the member list |
| .github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE/ | Member profile form, docs-fix form, template chooser config | You change how people submit information |
| AGENTS.md | Rules, sources of truth and open items for coding agents | You (or an agent) edit this repo |
- Spot a wrong fact or a broken link? Open a docs-fix issue.
- Lab member? Submit your profile; see members/README.md first.
- Pull requests are welcome. Keep the style and facts rules in AGENTS.md and run its checks before you open one.
Text and code in this repository are released under the MIT License. The names and logos of the Advanced Telerobotics Research Laboratory and Kent State University are trademarks and are not covered by that license.
The logo files in press-kit/logos/ are here so people can show the lab's mark correctly; follow the usage rules in that folder. The Kent State University wordmark is not included: get it from kent.edu/brand/logos.
ATR Lab docs ·
About the lab ·
Getting started ·
Dev guidelines ·
All things ROS 2 ·
All repositories
Advanced Telerobotics Research Laboratory · Department of Computer Science · Kent State University ·
www.atr.cs.kent.edu