We are the SoRo Lab, a research laboratory dedicated to the study and application of social robotics.

The laboratory is co-led by Professors Dr. Marcelo Fantinato and Dr. Sarajane Marques Peres, both associate professors at the School of Arts, Sciences, and Humanities (EACH) of the University of São Paulo (USP), Brazil. It also includes collaboration from several researchers and undergraduate and graduate students.

The activities of SoRo Lab began in 2014, driven by cooperation with Prof. Dr. Patrick C. K. Hung from Ontario Tech University, Canada. Initially, our studies focused on smart toys, a special type of social robots. However, today our focus extends to social robots in broader contexts.

The laboratory explores different sociotechnical aspects of human-robot interaction, focusing on the use of social robotics to solve social problems. The main focus of our research is the use of social robotics to improve the quality of life for the elderly and support the process of healthy aging. In this research line, we collaborate with researchers in gerontechnology.

Other initiatives are associated with education with social robotics and for social robotics, and the use of social robots as intelligent conversational agents. Conversational agents are implemented with the interaction of large language models and the expressiveness of social robots. A partnership with C4AI – Center for Artificial Intelligence (IBM-USP-Fapesp) and CIAAM – Center for Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning at USP drives our research in the area.