Wafa Johal

Associate Professor · School of Computing and Information Systems · University of Melbourne

I design robot systems that are useful and accepted in the real world — in classrooms, clinics, and collaborative workspaces. My research spans social signal sensing, affective reasoning, and natural expressivity in embodied agents.

My latest work focuses on robots that learn from human demonstration and mixed-reality interfaces for intuitive human-robot interaction. Previously at EPFL. PhD from Université Grenoble-Alpes.

If you are interested in working with me as a PhD student, postdoc, or research intern, please reach out by email with a brief description of your background and interests.

Selected Publications

Oops, I Did It Again (But I Know It): Robot Failure Consistency and Awareness in Human-Robot Collaboration

Ramtin Tabatabaei , Vassilis Kostakos , and Wafa Johal

In Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems , 2026

Bib

@inproceedings{tabatabaei2026oops,
  title = {Oops, I Did It Again (But I Know It): Robot Failure Consistency and Awareness in Human-Robot Collaboration},
  author = {Tabatabaei, Ramtin and Kostakos, Vassilis and Johal, Wafa},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems},
  year = {2026},
  publisher = {ACM},
  doi = {10.1145/3772318.3790336},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.1145/3772318.3790336},
}

Modelling Visuo-Haptic Perception Change in Size Estimation Tasks

Jian Zhang , Wafa Johal, and Jarrod Knibbe

In Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems , 2026

Bib

@inproceedings{zhang2026visuo,
  title = {Modelling Visuo-Haptic Perception Change in Size Estimation Tasks},
  author = {Zhang, Jian and Johal, Wafa and Knibbe, Jarrod},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems},
  year = {2026},
  publisher = {ACM},
  doi = {10.1145/3772318.3791140},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.1145/3772318.3791140},
}

Investigating the Impact of Robot Degree of Redundancy on Learning from Demonstration

Muhammad Bilal , D. Antony Chacon , Nir Lipovetzky , Denny Oetomo , and Wafa Johal

In Proceedings of the 2026 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction , 2026

Bib

@inproceedings{bilal2026redundancy,
  title = {Investigating the Impact of Robot Degree of Redundancy on Learning from Demonstration},
  author = {Bilal, Muhammad and Chacon, D. Antony and Lipovetzky, Nir and Oetomo, Denny and Johal, Wafa},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the 2026 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction},
  year = {2026},
  publisher = {ACM/IEEE},
  doi = {10.1145/3757279.3785606},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.1145/3757279.3785606},
}

Full publication list →

Research Projects

Learning from Demonstration

Robots that acquire tasks through human-guided demonstrations and interactive feedback.

Social Robotics & Gesture

Natural expressivity and culturally-aware communication for embodied agents.

Robots in Education

Tangible and haptic robot interfaces designed for learning environments.

Mixed Reality HRI

AR/VR interfaces for intuitive, co-located human-robot collaboration.