Sunwook Kim
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, VA·Engineering
Autistic adults bring distinctive skills to technical work, yet they are hired and retained at lower rates than equally qualified peers, including in manufacturing and other STEM jobs where the United States faces a widening skills gap. Autistic adults make up at least 2% of the U.S.
- Fields
Engineering
Psychology
Education Research
- Topics
autistic adults
autism
neurodiversity
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jul 2029
What they work on
- Co-create robot support strategies with autistic adults and industry experts that address autonomy, competence and relatedness, the three basic psychological needs described by Self-Determination Theory, using interviews and focus groups.
- Use human-in-the-loop simulations, in which a worker operates alongside the robot in controlled conditions, to refine industrial robot support approaches across iterative co-design cycles.
- Advance industrial robot intelligence so the machine can identify when a worker's psychological needs are unmet and deliver adaptive, personalized support in manufacturing settings.
- Assess whether Self-Determination Theory-based robot support improves motivation, work quality and job satisfaction for autistic and non-autistic employees alike.
More about the research
population, so raising their employment could measurably broaden the technical workforce. This collaborative project asks whether industrial robots, the machines that already share factory floors with human workers, can be made to provide personalized support that helps autistic employees thrive.
Why it matters
If industrial robots can sense and support workers' psychological needs, autistic employees in manufacturing and STEM jobs could see better job retention, income and independence. More inclusive factory floors may also help address the manufacturing skills gap and broaden participation in the technical workforce.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Patricio Vela
Georgia Institute of Technology, GA·Engineering
Develop an instrument for measuring worker, robot and supervisor technology adoption and performance through a grounded theory study of collaborative robotics in industry.
Madhura Kulkarni
Northern Kentucky University, KY·Education Research
Create and assess a "4C" fellowship for underrepresented and transfer STEM students that combines scholarships with co-mentoring, community building, career development, and research experiences.
Andrew Begel
Carnegie Mellon University, PA·Education Research
Develop teaching materials and scalable tools that teach AI technical skills to autistic community college STEM students through a learning-by-doing approach, delivered partly through online training.
The school
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University: 35 labs on PI Pages, $657M a year on research, 496 research doctorates a year.
More about Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
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