Victor Nikhil Antony, a Ph.D. candidate in computer science at Johns Hopkins University, is developing socially assistive robots designed to better understand and respond to human social cues in real-world environments, with support from a 2026 O’Shaughnessy Fellowship awarded by O’Shaughnessy Ventures LLC.
The research addresses a longstanding challenge in robotics: while robots can perform effectively under controlled laboratory conditions, they often struggle to interpret social signals and adapt their behavior when interacting with people in everyday settings. Antony’s work focuses on building a software layer that enables robots to recognize and respond to human behavior through repeated real-world interactions rather than relying solely on laboratory datasets.
To generate the data needed for this research, Antony plans to deploy robots in educational and eldercare environments. A tabletop robot will be used in Baltimore charter schools to support children’s reading, while a second system will be introduced into an eldercare setting to assist with cognitive health. The deployments are intended to produce long-term behavioral interaction data that can be used to improve how robots perceive and respond to people.
Over the next 12 months, Antony aims to complete semester-long, teacher-led classroom pilots, collect more than 500 hours of human-robot interaction data, and complete a month-long paid deployment in an eldercare environment. The resulting data will be used to refine models of social interaction for assistive robotic systems.
Antony has developed and open-sourced a suite of socially assistive robots that have been used in studies spanning education, health and wellbeing. He also served as lead program chair for the 2026 Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) Pioneers workshop, which supports early-career researchers in the field, and is a recipient of the Baltimore Innovation Initiative award.
Jim O’Shaughnessy, founder and chief executive officer of O’Shaughnessy Ventures, said robotics is expected to be an important area of technological development over the coming decades. Antony said the fellowship will support his efforts to develop the social intelligence required for robots to interact more effectively with people outside laboratory settings.
