Distinguished Lecturers

Fei Chen received the B.S. in computer science from Xi’an Jiaotong University in 2006, the M.S. in computer science from Harbin Institute of Technology in 2008, and the Dr. Eng. in robotics from Nagoya University, Japan, in 2012. Then he joined the Department of Advanced Robotics at the Italian Institute of Technology and found the Active Perception and Robot Interactive Learning laboratory. Since 2020, he has been an assistant professor with Department of Mechanical and Automation Engineering at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. He is also affiliated with CUHK T Stone Robotics Institute and Hong Kong Centre for Logistics Robotics. His research interests lie in robot learning and control for various types of mobile manipulation robots that collaborate with human beings. He serves as Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Cognitive and Developmental System. He is a senior member of IEEE.

Talk #1

Robot Mobile Manipulation: from Autonomous to Collaborative

Modern society demands the heavy usage of robotic mobile manipulators with high autonomy and intelligence to work ether independently or collaboratively with human beings. For this purpose, the robot should be able to accomplish various manipulation tasks without or will little prior knowledge of the status of objects and human workers in a highly unstructured and dynamic environment. It is important first for the mobile manipulation robots to understand human status (intention, cognitive status, etc.) via multi- modal sensing means and then achieve human level capability in terms of perception of environment, planning and learning of manipulation skills adaptively and intelligently. In this talk, we will cover various topics and issues along the direction to develop collaborative mobile manipulation robots the team has been achieved in the past years and demonstrate various setup of autonomous mobile manipulator for various flexible domestic and industrial scenarios.

Danica Kragic is a Professor at the School of Computer Science and Communication at the Royal Institute of Technology, KTH. She received MSc in Mechanical Engineering from the Technical University of Rijeka, Croatia in 1995 and PhD in Computer Science from KTH in 2001. She has been a visiting researcher at Columbia University, Johns Hopkins University and INRIA Rennes. She is the Director of the Centre for Autonomous Systems. Danica received the 2007 IEEE Robotics and Automation Society Early Academic Career Award. She is a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences and Young Academy of Sweden. She holds a Honorary Doctorate from the Lappeenranta University of Technology. She chaired IEEE RAS Technical Committee on Computer and Robot Vision and served as an IEEE RAS AdCom member. In 2012, she received an ERC Starting Grant.She is an IEEE Fellow.

"Yu Sun is a Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, with joint appointments in the Institute of Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering, the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and the Department of Computer Science at the University of Toronto (UofT). He is a Tier I Canada Research Chair and Director of the UofT Robotics Institute. His Advanced Micro and Nanosystems Laboratory specializes in developing innovative technologies and instruments for manipulating and characterizing cells, molecules, and nanomaterials.

Sun is the Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Trans. Automation Science and Engineering and has served on the editorial boards of IEEE Trans. Robotics, IEEE Trans. Mechatronics, and a few other journals. Among the awards he received were the McLean Award, IEEE Robotics and Automation Society Early Academic Career Award, NSERC Steacie Memorial Fellowship, and NSERC Synergy Award for Innovation. His group has also won over a dozen best paper awards and finalists in journals and at international conferences.

He was elected Fellow of ASME, IEEE, AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science), NAI (US National Academy of Inventors), AIMBE (American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering), CAE (Canadian Academy of Engineering), and RSC (Royal Society of Canada)."

Primary areas: Material/Parts Handling, Micro and nano Scales, Healthcare and Life Sciences.
Secondary areas: Micromanipulation, end effector, force sensing, microassembling, computer vision, automation at micro-nanometer scales, micro devices, MEMS, microfluidics, biomedical engineering.