• 

  Tin Lun Lam

  Director of Center for Intelligent Robots at z6首页; Assistant Professor at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen

  Executive Chair

  Bio

  Tin Lun Lam, Senior Member of IEEE, serves as Assistant Professor of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Executive Deputy Director of the National-local Joint Engineering Laboratory of Robotics and Intelligent Manufacturing, and Director of the Center for Intelligent Robots of Shenzhen Institute of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics for Society. He received his B.Eng. Degree with First Class Honors and Ph.D. Degree in Robotics and Automation from the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2006 and 2010, respectively. The research focus includes multi-robot systems, field robotics, and human-robot collaboration. He has been granted over 60 patents, published 2 monographs, and over 60 international journal and conference papers. Most of them were published in top-tier international journals and conference proceedings in robotics and automation, such as TRO, JFR, T-MECH, RA-L, ICRA, and IROS. Based on his research, he received an IEEE/ASME T-MECH Best Paper Award in 2011 and IROS Best Paper Award on Robot Mechanisms and Design in 2020. His research outcomes are also reported in many popular media, including Reuters, Discovery Channel, IEEE Spectrum, and NHK.

  Abstract
• 

  Auke Ijspeert

  Professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL)

  Investigating and assisting locomotion using modular robots

  Bio

  Auke Ijspeert is a professor at EPFL (the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, Switzerland), IEEE Fellow, and head of the Biorobotics Laboratory (https://www.epfl.ch/labs/biorob). He has a B.Sc./M.Sc. in physics from the EPFL (1995), and a PhD in artificial intelligence from the University of Edinburgh (1999). His research interests are at the intersection between robotics and computational neuroscience. He is interested in using numerical simulations and robots to gain a better understanding of animal locomotion and movement control, and in using inspiration from biology to design novel types of robots and locomotion controllers (see for instance Ijspeert et al, Science, Vol. 315, 2007 and Ijspeert, Science Vol. 346, 2014). He is also interested in assisting persons with limited mobility using exoskeletons and assistive furniture. With his colleagues, he has received paper awards at ICRA2002, CLAWAR2005, IEEE Humanoids 2007, IEEE ROMAN 2014, CLAWAR 2015, and CLAWAR 2019. He is associate editor for the International Journal of Humanoid Robotics and the IEEE Transactions on Medical Robotics and Bionics. He is also a member of the Board of Reviewing Editors of Science magazine. 

  Abstract

  The ability to efficiently move in complex environments is a fundamental property both for animals and for robots, and the problem of locomotion and movement control is an area in which neuroscience, biomechanics, and robotics can fruitfully interact. In this talk, I will present how biorobots and numerical models can be used to explore the interplay of the four main components underlying animal locomotion, namely central pattern generators (CPGs), reflexes, descending modulation, and the musculoskeletal system. Going from lamprey to human locomotion, I will present a series of models that tend to show that the respective roles of these components have changed during evolution with a dominant role of CPGs in lamprey and salamander locomotion, and a more important role for sensory feedback and descending modulation in human locomotion. I will also present the Roombots project, a project in which we use self-reconfigurable robots to create an assistive environment for people who have limited mobility. 

• 

  Julien Bourgeois

  Professor at the University of Bourgogne Franche-Comté (UBFC)

  The Programmable Matter Project: Realizing a matter made of autonomous robots

  Bio

  Julien Bourgeois is a professor of computer science at the University of Bourgogne Franche-Comté (UBFC) in France. He is part of the computer science department at the FEMTO-ST institute, CNRS. His research interests include distributed intelligent MEMS (DiMEMS) and Programmable Matter. He has worked for more than 15 years on these topics and has co-authored more than 180 international publications. He was an invited professor at Carnegie Mellon University (US) from 2012 to 2013, at Emory University (US) in 2011 and at Hong Kong Polytechnic University in 2010, 2011 and 2015. As a PI, he led different funded research projects (Smart Surface, Smart Blocks, Computation and coordination for DiMEMS, Programmable Matter). He is currently leading the Programmable Matter Consortium. He organized and chaired many conferences (dMEMS 2010, 2012, HotP2P/IPDPS 2010, Euromicro PDP 2008 and 2010, IEEE GreenCom 2012, IEEE iThings 2012, IEEE CPSCom 2012, GPC 2012, IEEE HPCC 2014, IEEE ICESS 2014, CSS 2014, IEEE CSE 2016, IEEE EUC 2015, IEEE ATC 2017, IEEE CBDCom 2017, DARS 2022). 

  Abstract

  Technological advances, especially in the miniaturization of robotic devices foreshadow the emergence of large-scale ensembles of small-size resource-constrained robots that distributivity cooperate to achieve complex tasks. These ensembles are formed by independent, intelligent, and communicating units which act as a whole forming a programmable matter i.e., a matter able to autonomously change its shape.
  In my talk, I will present our research effort in building a modular robot composed of mm-scale units. We use micro-technology to scale down the size of each element, and we study geometry, structure, actuation, power, electronics and integration. We develop new software methods to scale up in the number of managed robots like synchronization, leader election, self-assembly and self-reconfiguration to name a few.

Video Archive