Anuj Zore

University of Maryland, College Park, MIT World Peace University

Papers

Total Citations

H-Index

About

Anuj Zore is a robotics researcher whose work lies at the intersection of autonomous navigation, human-robot interaction, and embodied AI. His most impactful contribution is CoNVOI, a context-aware navigation framework that harnesses Vision Language Models (VLMs) to enable robots to interpret and adapt to diverse real-world environments—from indoor corridors to outdoor terrains. By using VLMs for zero-shot scene classification and semantic reasoning, CoNVOI allows robots to make intelligent navigation decisions without task-specific training, a breakthrough that has already garnered 15 citations since its 2024 release. Zore also developed AIKO v1.0, a companion robot designed for psychological assistance, which innovatively combines pseudo-expressions with emotion detection to foster more natural human-robot interaction. This work addresses the growing need for socially assistive robotics, particularly for users requiring emotional support. Through CoNVOI, Zore is pushing the boundaries of how robots perceive and move through the world, while AIKO demonstrates his commitment to making robots not just functional, but empathetic. His research is shaping a future where autonomous systems are both contextually aware and emotionally intelligent.