Vivian Chu

Vivian Chu
Born	circa 1987 San Jose, California, U.S.
Occupation(s)	Robotics expert, entrepreneur, Chief Technology Officer
Years active	2009–present
Known for	Human–robot interaction, co-founder and CTO of Diligent Robotics

Vivian Chu (born around 1987) is an American expert in robotics and entrepreneurship, with a focus on Human–robot interaction. She serves as the Chief Technology Officer at Diligent Robotics, a company she helped establish in 2017 to create autonomous, mobile robots with advanced social intelligence.

Early life and education

Chu was raised in San Jose, California, by parents who were both software engineers.

In 2009, she obtained her bachelor's degree in electrical engineering and computer science from the University of California, Berkeley. During her time at Berkeley, her research concentrated on integrated flywheels within hybrid drivetrain systems. Upon graduation, she joined IBM Almaden Research, where she worked on projects related to natural language processing and intelligent data integration.

Starting in 2011, Chu pursued a master's degree at the University of Pennsylvania, conducting research under Katherine Kuchenbecker in the GRASP Lab’s Haptics Research Group. Her work involved creating algorithms that allow robots to link tactile sensor inputs with human descriptive terms such as "fuzzy," enabling robots to generalize touch-based learning to unfamiliar objects. This research was recognized with the Best Paper award in Cognitive Robotics at the IEEE International Conference on Robotics in 2013.

Following her master's studies, Chu completed an internship at Honda Research America and then embarked on a PhD program at Georgia Tech. Under the guidance of Andrea L. Thomaz and Sonia Chernova, she developed methods for robots to reason about the consequences of their actions and adjust their interactions accordingly. Drawing inspiration from developmental psychology, her research emphasized robot learning through human-assisted self-exploration to comprehend object affordances. Chu demonstrated that integrating both self-directed and supervised learning approaches enhances robotic performance. In 2017, the year she earned her PhD, she and Thomaz filed a patent for this innovative technology.

Career and research

In 2015, Chu completed an internship at Google[x] under Leila Takayama. Subsequently, she collaborated with Andrea Thomaz to create socially aware robots designed for assistance in workplace and home environments. Together, they founded Diligent Robotics in 2017. After finishing her doctoral studies in 2018, Chu took on the role of full-time Chief Technology Officer at the company, guiding a multidisciplinary team dedicated to advancing autonomous mobile manipulation, social intelligence, and human-in-the-loop learning technologies derived from her academic work.

Diligent Robotics

The initial clinical assistant robot developed by Diligent Robotics was Poli, a single-armed robot engineered to fetch supply kits ahead of time, thereby allowing nursing personnel to devote more attention to patient care. Poli underwent pilot testing at Seton Medical Center at the University of Texas in Austin. The company's subsequent healthcare robot, Moxi, represents an enhanced iteration of Poli featuring a more anthropomorphic design that includes a face capable of conveying social signals alongside a head and torso.

In 2020, Diligent Robotics obtained $10 million during its Series A funding round. By 2022, the company had raised upwards of $30 million through Series B financing led by Tiger Global, bringing total funding close to $50 million since its founding. The firm has earned notable accolades including inclusion in Time's 100 Best Inventions (2019), recognition as a Technology Pioneer by the World Economic Forum (2021), and listing among Newsweek's America's Greatest Disruptors (2021).

Awards and honors

• 2013 IEEE International Conference on Robotics: Awarded Best Paper in cognitive robotics
• 2014 Recipient of the Google Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship
• 2016 Nomination for Best Technical Advance in Human-Robot Interaction for the paper on Human-Guided Robot Self-Exploration
• 2019 Featured in MIT Technology Review's 35 Innovators Under 35
• 2021 Included in Fast Company's Queer 50 list
• 2022 Named again in Fast Company's Queer 50
• 2022 Recognized by Fortune Magazine in their 40 under 40

Media representation

• 2020: Featured in Zara Stone’s book, The Future of Science is Female

Selected publications

• Bin Liu, Laura Chiticariu, Vivian Chu, H. V. Jagadish, Frederick R. Reiss, "Enhancing Information Extraction Rules Through Data Provenance," IEEE Data Engineering Bulletin, 2010.
• Vivian Chu et al., "Robotic Exploratory Procedures for Learning the Meaning of Haptic Adjectives," IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2013.
• Vivian Chu, Kalesha Bullard, Andrea L. Thomaz, "Real-Time Multimodal Contingency Detection in Human-Robot Interaction," IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2014.
• Vivian Chu et al., "Learning Haptic Adjectives via Physical Interaction with Robots," Robotics and Autonomous Systems (RAS), 2015.
• Vivian Chu, Tesca Fitzgerald, Andrea L. Thomaz, "Combining Human Guidance and Self-Exploration to Learn Object Affordances," IEEE/ACM International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), 2016.
• Vivian Chu, Baris Akgun, Andrea L. Thomaz, "Acquiring Haptic Affordances Through Demonstration and Human-Guided Exploration," IEEE Haptics Symposium (HAPTICS), 2016.
• Vivian Chu, Andrea L. Thomaz, "Examining Variability Among Teachers When Learning Object Affordances via Guided Exploration," International Journal of Robotics Research (IJRR), 2017.