Robot Control, Learning and Teleoperation

15^th September 2023, 13:30 6th Floor Conference Room 605, EEE
Prof. Chenguang (Charlie) Yang
Bristol Robotics Laboratory, UWE Bristol

Abstract

Nowadays robots are expected to be of increasing intelligence to deal with a large range of tasks. Especially, robots are supposed to be able to learn skills from our humans and perform dexterous manipulation in a human-like manner. A number of learning algorithms and techniques have been developed and successfully implemented for various robotic tasks. Among these methods, learning from demonstrations (LfD) enables robots to effectively and efficiently acquire skills by learning from human demonstrators, such that a robot can be quickly programmed to perform new tasks. This talk will present my recent research progress on human-in-the-loop learning for robots to acquire and generalize manipulation skills. It will also introduce my decade long studies on human-like control design inspired by human motor behaviors. The control and learning technologies I developed have been particularly applied to robot teleoperation, for which I have also extensively investigated human robot interaction interface design. This talk will also cover my work on perception, novel sensor and actuator design for robotics.

Biography

Professor Chenguang (Charlie) Yang is the leader of Robot Teleoperation Group of Bristol Robotics Laboratory, the Corresponding Co-Chair of the Technical Committee on Collaborative Automation for Flexible Manufacturing (CAFM), IEEE Robotics and Automation Society. He received PhD degree from the National University of Singapore (2010) and performed postdoctoral research at Imperial College London. He is a recipient of the prestigious IEEE Transactions on Robotics Best Paper Award (2012) and IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems Outstanding Paper Award (2022) as lead authors. He has been awarded EPSRC Innovation Fellowship and EU FP-7 Marie Curie International Incoming Fellowship. He is a Fellow of Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE), Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET), British Computer Society (BCS) and Higher Education Academy (HEA). He has served as Associate Editor of a number of leading international journals including IEEE Transactions on Robotics. He is an elected Member-at-Large of the Board of Governors with IEEE Systems, Man, and Cybernetics Society (SMC), and an AdCom member with IEEE Industrial Electronics Society (IES), 2023-2025.