We’re excited to share that Loh Jia Quan (JQ) has successfully passed his PhD confirmation seminar!
Quoting his supervisor Vincent,
A bit less than a year after joining us, JQ successfully pass his confirmation today! JQ’s PhD is interested in developing methods to improve upper-limb rehabilitation post-stroke. Today he presented his progress to date which led to a conference paper to be presented in ICORR in May. He also presented his plan to extend this work to learn physical interaction between patients and physiotherapists.
JQ’s work sits at the intersection of rehabilitation robotics, human-robot interaction, and physical therapy, aiming to create technologies that meaningfully enhance post-stroke recovery. We’re proud of the solid foundation he’s built already and look forward to seeing his contributions unfold.
Congratulations, JQ, on this important milestone!
Journalist(s): Vincent
#PhDConfirmation #RehabilitationRobotics #HumanRobotInteraction #ICORR2025 #PostStrokeRecovery #PhysicalHumanRobotInteraction #ResearchMilestone #RoboticsForHealth
We’re delighted to celebrate Chongzhi Wang, who recently gave her PhD completion seminar on April 2nd—and what a fantastic session it was!
As part of her joint PhD with Shanghai Jiao Tong University, she spent her final year with us—and we’ve all benefited from her quiet brilliance and generous spirit (not to mention brushing up on a bit of matrix math just by chatting with her!).
Her talk, “Matrix-weighted Networks in Consensus and Synchronization”, was clear, composed, and packed with insight. I really enjoyed it. Chongzhi was calm and confident throughout, handling questions with ease—including some excellent ones from Airlie Chapman that led to great discussion.
Her SJTU supervisors and colleagues tuned in online to support her, though they didn’t get a chance to ask questions this time around. But no worries—Chongzhi has another defense seminar at SJTU later this year, and we’re sure she’ll impress them just as much as she did us.
Congrats again, Chongzhi—it’s been a joy having you with us! We wish you all the best in the final stages of your PhD journey.
Journalist(s): Ying
#PhDCompletion #ConsensusAndSynchronization #MatrixWeightedNetworks #RoboticsResearch #HumanRobotInteraction #PhDLife #WomenInSTEM #JointPhD #ResearchJourney
Following an exciting week at HRI 2025, we were thrilled to host fellow researchers and participants for a lab tour at our facilities!
Visitors had the chance to meet our robots up close, explore our current Human-Robot Interaction research projects, and chat with our team about the work we’re doing across areas like shared autonomy, assistive robotics, teleoperation, and sustainable interaction design.
It was a fantastic opportunity to exchange ideas, spark new collaborations, and give a behind-the-scenes look at the systems and prototypes we’ve been developing.
A huge thank you to everyone who joined us—it was truly energizing to connect in person and share our passion for HRI!
Looking forward to more exciting collaborations and conversations in the future.
#HRI2025 #LabTour #HumanRobotInteraction #RoboticsResearch #AssistiveRobots #SharedAutonomy #Teleoperation #SocialRobotics #RobotsForGood #ResearchCommunity #OpenLab
Journalist(s): Farshad
We’re proud to announce that Murphy, representing our lab, received the Sustainability Recognition Award at the HRI 2025 Student Design Challenge! 🎉
This year’s challenge centered around the theme “Robots for a Sustainable World,” and Murphy’s project—Neighbor Koala—stood out for its creativity and impact.
Neighbor Koala is a community service robot designed to strengthen social connections and promote sustainable living by:
🌿 Facilitating item exchanges among neighbors to reduce waste
📸 Capturing and sharing community moments to build shared memories
🎁 Leveraging the sociological concept of “gifting” to foster emotional bonds and encourage meaningful interactions
The project was a collaboration between students from The University of Melbourne, RMIT, UNSW, and Monash University—a fantastic example of cross-institutional teamwork in designing socially meaningful robotic solutions.
Congratulations to Murphy and the team for their inspiring work toward a more connected and sustainable world!
#HRI2025 #StudentDesignChallenge #RobotsForSustainability #NeighborKoala #HumanRobotInteraction #CommunityRobotics #GiftingEconomy
Journalist(s): Murphy and Farshad
We’re excited to share that our lab was represented at HRI 2025! 🎉
Jon presented the paper “Using Fitts’ Law to Benchmark Assisted Human-Robot Performance”, co-authored by Jiahe Pan, Denny Oetomo, Wafa Johal. This work introduces a novel benchmarking method for shared control systems, leveraging Fitts’ Law to systematically assess task difficulty and its impact on human-robot collaboration. The findings contribute to improving adaptive shared control strategies, with potential applications across diverse human-robot interaction scenarios.
A big congratulations to the team for advancing research in benchmarking and adaptive assistance in HRI! 🎊
#HRI2025 #HumanRobotInteraction #SharedControl #FittsLaw #Benchmarking #CognitiveLoad
Journalist: Farshad
We are delighted to share that Tianshi Yu’s graduation ceremony took place on the 17th of December. Tianshi’s groundbreaking contributions to the field of advanced prosthetics have been truly inspiring.
During the ceremony, the following citation was read to honour his work:
“Tianshi Yu studied techniques for estimating human intentions to enable more intuitive control of prosthetic limbs. The research optimizes the information content extracted from sensors worn by the user, improving how naturally the prostheses function. This leads to enhanced performance and a better quality of life for individuals with limb loss.”
Congratulations to Dr. Yu on this well-deserved achievement! We wish you continued success in all your future endeavours.
Journalist: Alireza
Our lab members have recently reached significant milestones! On 31st October, Cheryl successfully passed her confirmation, with her research focusing on “Dexterous Prosthetic In-hand Manipulation with Human in the Loop Control”. In addition, Kusal also passed his confirmation on 22nd November with a research topic of “Effects of Neuromuscular Fatigue on Lifting Biomechanics”.
On 21st November, Mingrui delivered his completion seminar. His thesis, titled “Physical Human-Robot Interface: Modelling Approaches and its Effect on Human-Exoskeleton Interaction”, investigates the mechanical behaviour of the physical human-robot interface (pHRI) and its impact on human-exoskeleton interaction. The findings highlight the importance of incorporating pHRI compliance in actuator design, provide a detailed understanding of pHRI stiffness variability, and propose novel approaches for human kinematics estimation that balance precision and usability.
We are proud of their hard work and dedication — congratulations to all!
Journalist: Xinliang
In October, Jihoon travelled to Kobe, Japan, to present his PhD research at IEEE SENSORS 2024 – a renowned international forum for sharing advancements in sensor technologies by researchers, engineers, and practitioners. This event offered Jihoon an excellent opportunity to explore cutting-edge developments in sensors and their applications across diverse fields.
At the conference, Jihoon presented his work on a patchable, non-invasive, inkjet-printed wearable electromyography sensor. This innovative sensor is designed for unobtrusive, comfortable, and long-duration use, providing a compact and low-cost solution while ensuring high signal quality and resistance to body movement.
Jihoon’s PhD work focuses on developing practical and user-friendly biomedical sensors that ensure reliable data collection while prioritising user comfort for broader applications in healthcare and beyond.
Journalist: Jihoon
In September, Tomislav, Jarvis and Jon travelled to Heidelberg to attend Biorob. Biorob is a biennial International Conference on Biomedical Robotics and Biomechatronics. This was a fantastic chance to see developments in human-robot interaction and exoskeletons while discovering and catching up with many teams working in our field.
Of our team Jarvis presented his work on using skin stretch devices to transmit information through haptics while Tomislav presented his and Mingrui’s work on the uniqueness of gait patterns across different walking conditions. Jon also co-organised a workshop on joint interaction (both between humans and between humans and robots).
After Biorob, Jon also presented his work on training people to perform trimanual coordination at the Symposium on human interfacing and augmentation held at Imperial College London.
Journalist: Jon
On Wednesday, 2nd October, Hengchang presented his Completion Seminar for his thesis titled “The Convergence Speed Improvement of Extremum Seeking Control with Practical Considerations”.
Hengchang’s work focuses on extremum-seeking control (ESC), which optimises system performance using real-time data but with non-smooth actuator nonlinearities like hysteresis and slow convergence. His thesis improves ESC algorithms by managing a generalised actuator hysteresis model, incorporating fixed-time optimisation, and developing a fast ESC design for Hammerstein-type systems without requiring time-scale separation.
Congratulations Hengchang!
Journalist: Xinliang
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