At Purdue University, Sooyeon Jeong, robot communication and behavior expert, is working to make robots as friendly and helpful as possible in nonfictional settings. Now, new research projects, including a robot study buddy and a robot concierge, are improving the ways humans and robots communicate and collaborate. “It was interesting; we had mixed and nuanced results from the study,” Jeong said. “Many of the robot assistants people are used to — Siri, Alexa, Google — are discrete in their interactions with humans,” Jeong said. More than 106,000 students study at Purdue across multiple campuses, locations and modalities, including more than 57,000 at our main campus locations in West Lafayette and Indianapolis.