ATDev Podcast Episode 47: Dr. Tapo Bhattacharjee on Robot Caregiving and Assistive Feeding

In this episode of the ATDev Podcast, host ‪@owenpkent‬ talks with Cornell Computer Science faculty Prof. Tapo, who leads the EmPRISE Lab focused on robots that assist people with mobility limitations in activities of daily living such as feeding, bed-bathing, and dressing, with an emphasis on real-world evaluation in homes and hospitals. Tapo shares his path from robotics interests in undergrad in India to surgical robotics in South Korea, a PhD at Georgia Tech on robotic touch sensing, and the impact of working with a quadriplegic lab participant that motivated him toward assistive robotics, followed by postdoctoral work on robot-assisted feeding. The conversation centers on safety in unstructured environments, the need for full-stack hardware/software co-design, human-in-the-loop methods to preserve agency and handle edge cases, personalized “perceived safety,” participatory design with stakeholders, and why task-specific, wheeled platforms may be more practical than humanoids today. 00:00 Welcome and Introductions 00:16 Meet Tapo and EmPRISE Lab 01:21 Origin Story in Assistive Robotics 04:05 Next Breakthroughs in Robot Feeding 04:31 Safety by Design Hardware and Software 07:00 Humans in the Loop and Dignity 09:00 Perceived Safety and Personalization 10:20 Feeding Edge Cases and Conditions 13:20 Participatory Design Process 16:12 Humanoids vs Task Specific Robots 18:14 Where to Learn More and Wrap Up