Over the past decade, robots have become an increasingly important part of our daily lives. Autonomous vehicles shuttle us from point A to point B, drones deliver lifesaving medicine to remote towns, sidewalk robots deliver groceries, industrial robots package online orders and robotic surgeons perform lifesaving operations. These are specialized use cases, but each represents an important step toward general-purpose robots that can coexist with us in the most intimate of settings: our own homes.

For roboticists like Nakul Gopalan , an assistant professor in the School of Computing and Augmented Intelligence — one of the largest computer science programs in the country and home to 1 in 12 Arizona State University students — the challenge of building an automaton that is safe and effect

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