Invited Speakers

Prof. Cong Peng

Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, China

Biography: Professor Peng Cong is the Associate Dean of the College of Changkong at Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics (NUAA) and a doctoral supervisor. She is a recipient of the National Excellent Young Scientists Fund of China. Professor Peng's research focuses on advanced spacecraft inertial actuators, artificial intelligence and industrial big data, and intelligent control. She has published more than 60 SCI-indexed papers in leading journals such as the IEEE Transactions series and holds over 30 authorized patents. Her work has been recognized with multiple honors, including the Second Prize of Jiangsu Provincial Science and Technology Award, the First Prize of the China Invention and Entrepreneurship Innovation Award, the Second Prize of the Technical Invention Award from the China Petroleum and Chemical Industry Federation, the Li Ming Young Talent Award of the Chinese Society of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and the Nanjing Outstanding Young Professional Award. Professor Peng was listed among the world's top 2% of scientists in 2024. She has also been recognized for her teaching excellence, having led courses selected as a National First-Class Undergraduate Course, a Featured Quality Course by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, and a Model Ideological and Political Course for Graduate Education in Jiangsu Province.

Speech Title: Key Enabling Technologies for Digital Twin

Abstract: Professor Peng has long been engaged in research on spacecraft inertial actuators, with systematic investigations into active vibration suppression techniques for various magnetic levitation inertial actuators. Breakthrough and innovative results have been achieved along three dimensions: mechanism-based vibration analysis, high-stability vibration control, and high-precision vibration suppression. The related technologies have been applied in multiple spacecraft products.
Building on this foundation, and in response to the growing limitations of conventional control methods in the era of digitalization and intelligence, this talk extends her work to the integration of complex mechatronic systems with digital twin technology. The presentation provides an in-depth exploration of the key enabling technologies for digital twins, covering three core aspects: digital twin modeling, Virtual-to-Physical (V2P) twin, and Physical-to-Virtual (P2V) twin. Advanced artificial intelligence techniques are leveraged to empower complex mechatronic systems, driving their evolution from traditional to digital architectures, and addressing the high-precision, high-stability control challenges of complex mechatronic systems operating under unknown disturbance environments.

Prof. Xiangyu Wang

Southeast University, China

Biography: Xiangyu Wang is a young chief professor and doctoral supervisor at the School of Automation, Southeast University, a key member of the Mechatronic Systems Control Laboratory (MSCL), the vice dean of the School of Future Technology, and a national-level young talent. He graduated with a PhD from Southeast University in 2014 and then joined the faculty. His research interests include nonsmooth control, anti-disturbance control, and applications in multi-autonomous robot systems, power electronics systems, etc. He has led three NSFC projects, participated in one NSFC key project as the principal investigator of a collaborating institution, and host over more than ten other projects. He has published over 80 papers in academic journals, with more than 20 papers published in the Automatica and IEEE Transactions such as IEEE TAC, TASE, TIE, and TPE. He serves as an associate editor for the SCI journals IET CTA and IJMAV. He has published one monograph and obtained more than 20 invention patents. As a principal contributor, he has won the first and second prizes of the Ministry of Education’s Natural Science Award, the gold medal at the Geneva International Invention Exhibition, two awards for top ten scientific and technological progress in Jiangsu Province’s industry fields, led a Huawei Spark Award, and was recognized as one of World’s Top 2% Scientists by Stanford University and Elsevier. He serves as the secretary general of the Jiangsu Association of Automation, a member of the Jiangsu Association for Science and Technology, a senior member of IEEE, a senior member of the Chinese Association of Automation, a senior member of the Chinese Institute of Command and Control, and a member of multiple specialized committees. He has served as the chairman of the organizing committee or program committee for multiple academic conferences.

Speech Title: Research on Embedded Cooperative Control Methods for Multi-Autonomous Robot Systems

Abstract: Multi-autonomous robot systems are capable of cooperatively performing a variety of complex tasks, and research on related control methods has become a hotspot in recent years. This speech will explore cooperative control problems for multi-autonomous robot systems and present research achievements of the speaker’s team in this area, which include cooperative formation control of multiple mobile robots, cooperative flight control of multiple unmanned aerial vehicles and extended application cases. By establishing an embedded cooperative control research framework, the proposed approach provides a concise, modular, highly scalable, and practical solution for cooperative control problems in multi-autonomous robot systems. Based on the research work of the speaker’s team, this speech will analyze and discuss related studies on cooperative control of multi-autonomous robot systems from multiple perspectives, ranging from multiple mobile robots to multiple unmanned aerial vehicles and from theory to application, and will further provide an outlook on future developments.

Prof. Lifeng Zhu

Southeast University, China

Biography: Lifeng Zhu is a Professor in the Department of Instrument Science and Engineering at Southeast University. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Peking University in 2012. His research interests span computer graphics, haptics, robotics, and their clinical applications. He has served as a Technical Editor for the International Journal of Medical Robotics and Computer-Assisted Surgery and as a Program Committee member for numerous conferences in graphics and robotics. He has published in top-tier venues such as IEEE TRO, TBME, TASE, ICRA and ACM TOG, SIGGRAPH, and has received Best Paper Awards at EG 2013 and IEEE ISMAR 2025.

Speech Title: Designing Haptic Devices and Interactions for Surgical Applications

Abstract: Controlling surgical robots demands intuitive interactions for surgeons. Because many surgical procedures are contact-rich, haptic feedback is essential for ensuring safe and effective operations. In this talk, we present several new designs of haptic devices and their applications in surgical robot interaction. By combining advanced force sensing with haptic rendering methods, these haptic interactions demonstrate strong potential for generating high-quality interaction data to support robot control.

Prof. Jixiang Yang

Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China

Biography: Jixiang Yang is a professor at the School of Mechanical Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology. He has been awarded the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) Excellent Young Scientists Fund, the NSFC Key Joint Fund Project, the National Key R&D Program for Young Scientists. In 2024 and 2025, he was consecutively named to the Elsevier "Highly Cited Chinese Researchers" list. His research focuses on profile accuracy and surface quality control in robotic measurement, milling, and polishing processes for complex curved surface parts. He holds over 60 authorized invention patents, and has published 67 SCI papers as the first or corresponding author, including 52 papers in Q1 journals.

Speech Title: Force Planning and Control for Robotic Polishing of Optical Parts

Abstract: Traditional regular polishing paths (e.g., raster and spiral) are prone to generating mid-spatial-frequency errors on surfaces of optical parts, adversely affecting imaging quality of optical systems. Although pseudo-random paths can effectively suppress mid-spatial-frequency errors, the geometric smoothing process at numerous corners leads to deviations between actual and theoretical polishing positions, and therefore reduces surface form accuracy, which severely limits their applications in deterministic polishing. This study constructs specially designed splines to smooth the path with the consideration of the material removal model, ensuring the deviation at each corner within the surface form error tolerance, thereby achieving both path smoothness and preserved form accuracy. Subsequently, to address the issue of feedrate deviation at corners caused by constraints on the robot's dynamic response limitations (e.g., acceleration and jerk), this research innovatively proposes a contact force compensation method to dynamically eliminate the material removal deviation induced by feedrate changes. Robotic polishing experiments on nickel-plated metal mirrors demonstrate that the proposed corner smoothing and force-velocity planning method proposed in this report successfully unifies high surface form accuracy with excellent mid-spatial-frequency error suppression capability, offering an effective technical pathway for the ultra-precision machining of high-performance optical components.

Prof. Shizhou Lu

Shandong University, China

Biography: Shizhou Lu is a Professor and doctoral supervisor at the School of Airspace Science and Engineering, Shandong University. He received his Ph.D. in Mechatronics Engineering from Harbin Institute of Technology in 2015. His research interests include robotics and intelligent manufacturing, soft robotics, and soft sensors. He has published over 30 papers as the first or corresponding author in journals such as Mechanical Systems and Signal Processing, IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics, IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, and Nonlinear Dynamics. Several intelligent equipment systems developed by him have seen industrial deployment. He received the Weihai Youth Science and Technology Award and the title of University-Local Cooperation Talent.

Speech Title: Magneto responsive Soft Robots with Co located Actuation Sensing Integration and Their Applications

Abstract: Magnetically actuated flexible robots serve as critical actuation platforms for precision operations in confined spaces, whose motion performance depends on compact mechanical design, real‑time state perception and high‑precision motion control. This paper presents a parallel‑configuration robot with co‑located electromagnetic actuation and flexible sensing, including structural design, sensor fabrication, and an adaptive dual closed‑loop control framework. Combining electromagnetic modeling and structural optimization, blade‑coated flexible‑electrode dielectric‑elastomer capacitive sensors are co‑located with electromagnetic actuators, realizing multi‑degree‑of‑freedom motion and in‑situ displacement sensing in a compact form factor. In the inner loop, radial‑basis‑function neural‑network compensation is incorporated with fast‑terminal sliding‑mode control for branch‑displacement tracking. In the outer loop, an adaptive unscented Kalman filter fuses displacement and attitude measurements to achieve pose estimation and error compensation. Trajectory‑tracking tests and binocular‑vision prototype experiments verify the system’s capability for high‑precision motion and attitude switching. This work demonstrates that the co‑design of actuation, sensing and control offers an effective route to realize compact integration and precise control of magnetically actuated flexible robots with co‑located sensing.

Assoc. Prof. Shilong Sun

Harbin Institute of Technology, Shenzhen, China

Biography: Shilong Sun is an Associate Professor in the School of Robotics and Advanced Manufacture at Harbin Institute of Technology (HIT), Shenzhen, China. He received his PhD in the Department of Systems Engineering and Engineering Management from the City University of Hong Kong in 2019.His research focuses on humanoid robots and locomotion control, with additional work in fault diagnosis and prognosis, and vibration energy harvesting. At HIT Shenzhen, he also serves as a doctoral supervisor and has been recognized as a Shenzhen Overseas High-Level Talent and as a recipient of support under the Hong Kong Innovation and Technology Fund’s PhD talent scheme. His scholarly work has been cited several hundred times in the robotics and control communities.

Speech Title: Learning-Based Whole-Body Locomotion Control for Legged Robots in Complex Environments

Abstract: Legged robots offer considerable potential for operating in complex and unstructured environments due to their mobility and adaptability. However, achieving robust and agile locomotion remains challenging because of nonlinear whole-body dynamics, intermittent foot–ground contacts, terrain uncertainty, and the sim-to-real gap. This talk presents our recent research on learning-based whole-body locomotion control for quadruped and humanoid robots. A unified framework combining reinforcement learning, model-based motion planning, and physical constraints is introduced to enable multiple locomotion skills, including walking, running, jumping, turning, and traversing uneven terrain. Particular attention is given to terrain-aware gait adaptation, proprioceptive representation learning, gait transition, and coordinated whole-body motion. The talk also discusses how constraint-informed policy learning, domain randomization, and systematic simulation training can improve robustness and facilitate transfer from simulation to physical robotic platforms. Furthermore, emerging opportunities for integrating locomotion control with perception, navigation, manipulation, and embodied world models are explored. The presented studies provide insights into developing legged robots capable of autonomous, reliable, and adaptive operation in complex real-world environments, with potential applications in industrial inspection, emergency response, and intelligent agriculture.

Assoc. Prof.  Yunquan Li

South China University of Technology, China

Biography: Dr. Yunquan Li is an Associate Professor and Doctoral Supervisor at the Shien-Ming Wu School of Intelligent Engineering, South China University of Technology. He received his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Hong Kong. His research focuses on soft and bioinspired robotics, particularly soft robotic hand, high-sensitivity tactile sensors, and mobile robotic systems. Dr. Li has published 59 papers, his work has appeared in leading journals, including IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics, IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics, and Soft Robotics. He has led projects funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China and provincial and municipal programs. He was selected for the Guangzhou Young Top-Notch Talent Program and is a core member of the Guangzhou Embodied Intelligent Robot Innovation and Entrepreneurship Team. His honors include an Excellence Award at the National Disruptive Technology Innovation Competition’s Intelligent Robot Championship. He also serves as a guest editor for Advanced Intelligent Systems and reviewer for international journals.

Speech Title: Soft Robotic Hands and Optical Tactile sensors for Robotic Grasping

Abstract: Dexterous end effectors are the key interface for embodied robots to physically interact with the environment. Their performance relies on both adaptive mechanical structures and tactile sensing for contact perception and force regulation. This talk presents our recent work on soft dexterous hands and optical tactile sensors. We introduce several bioinspired robotic hands—pneumatic soft hands, lightweight prosthetic hands, tendon-driven anthropomorphic hands, and rigid flexible coupled designs—to improve grasp adaptability, load capacity, and safety. For sensing, we present optical tactile systems based on flexible waveguides and light intensity modulation, including an adaptive stretchable e skin, a low cost 1D force sensor, and a compact 3D force sensor. Their applications cover contact localization, force measurement, grasp pattern recognition, texture/hardness perception, slip detection, and robot interaction control. Overall, these studies demonstrate how coordinated design of compliant structures and optical sensing enables more adaptive and reliable dexterous manipulation for embodied intelligent robots.