Don Engel

University of Maryland, Baltimore County, University of Maryland, College Park

Papers

Total Citations

H-Index

About

Don Engel is a researcher at the forefront of human-robot interaction (HRI), with a particular focus on leveraging virtual reality (VR) to overcome critical data bottlenecks in robotics. His work centers on developing novel simulation tools and multimodal datasets to train robots in grounded language acquisition and collaborative tasks. Engel’s most impactful contribution is the creation of a VR-based simulator that models robots, their sensors, and human avatars, enabling the collection of rich training data for real-world deployment. This work, detailed in his 2021 paper "A Simulator for Human-Robot Interaction in Virtual Reality" (8 citations), addresses the significant challenge of obtaining diverse, naturalistic interaction data. He further advanced the field with a spoken language dataset combining RGB, depth, and audio for speech-based grounded learning (6 citations). By demonstrating that VR can serve as a viable proxy for physical HRI, Engel has opened new avenues for scalable, safe, and cost-effective robot training. His ongoing research into collaborative building tasks in VR versus reality continues to push the boundaries of how robots learn to understand and cooperate with humans in dynamic environments.