Expertise

Topics:  Interaction with Autonomous Systems, Mechatronics, Design Tools, Interaction Design

Nikolas Martelaro is an Assistant Professor at Carnegie Mellon's Human-Computer Interaction Institute. His lab is dedicated to enhancing designers' abilities through innovative technologies and design methodologies. He is driven by a passion for crafting interactive and intelligent products, and seeks to develop new approaches to support designers in their work. Blending expertise in product design methods, interaction design, human-robot interaction, and mechatronic engineering, he creates tools and methods that empower designers to gain deeper insights into human behavior and ultimately produce more human-centered products. Prior to joining the HCII, he held the position of Digital Experiences Researcher at Accenture Technology Labs in San Francisco. He earned his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford's Center for Design Research under the co-advisorship of Larry Leifer and Wendy Ju.

Media Experience

Carnegie Mellon Community Shines at SXSW 2025 — an Intersection of Culture, Tech and Innovation  — CMU News
At another session, Sarah Fox and Nikolas Martelaro presented their collaboration with transit operators and their unions aimed at understanding the impacts of future technologies on transportation workers. The two explained the potential to leverage AI in "Creating Safer, More Equitable Public Transit Systems." “We have been really excited to work with our union partners and to learn from real operators what is all the complexity and things that are happening on the road in real transit operations,” Martelaro said. “How can we understand and learn from operators to bring that knowledge into thinking about new technologies?”

Futurity  — Futurity
In their research, Carnegie Mellon University School of Computer Science faculty members Sarah Fox and Nikolas Martelaro highlight potential issues sidewalk robots encounter during deployment and propose solutions to mitigate them before the robots hit the streets.

A (hypothetical, incremental) revolution in automated transit  — Politico
I called up Sarah Fox and Nikolas Martelaro, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and authors of a 2022 policy paper on automated public transit, to ask them exactly how close, or far, we might be from that “win.” As it turns out, it’s a little bit more complicated than simply taking the driver out of every bus. An edited and condensed version of the conversation follows: