Youmin Zhang (IEEE Fellow, CSME Fellow)
Concordia University, Canada
BIO: Dr. Youmin Zhang is currently a Professor in the Department of Mechanical, Industrial, and Aerospace Engineering at Concordia University, Canada. His research interests include monitoring, diagnosis, and physical fault/cyber-attack tolerant/resilient control, as well as the guidance, navigation, and control of unmanned systems (air, space, land, marine, and autonomous vehicles, etc.) and smart grids. These research areas have applications in solving safety and security issues of forest fires, smart grids, and smart cities within the framework of cyber-physical systems by combining remote sensing and image processing techniques. He has published 10 books and over 600 journal and conference papers, which have been cited up to 31,348 times on Google Scholar, with the h-index of 87, and i10-index of 431 currently. His publications have been ranked #1 worldwide in "Aircraft Systems" and "Fault Tolerance" (lifetime) and #2 worldwide in "Unmanned Aerial Vehicles" (lifetime), making him the only contributor from Canada in that category, according to the recent ranking by ScholarGPS. He has also been continuously recognized in the "World's Top 2% Scientists" by Stanford University's ranking since its launch in 2021.
Prof. Zhang is a Fellow of IEEE and CSME (Canadian Society of Mechanical Engineering), and served as the President of the International Society of Intelligent Unmanned Systems from 2019 to 2022. He has held roles as (Deputy) Editor-in-Chief and (Advisory) Editorial Board Member for more than 20 journals. Additionally, he has served as (Honorary) General Chair and Program Chair for several conferences related to autonomous/unmanned systems, renewable energies, and smart cities. More detailed information can be found at http://users.encs.concordia.ca/~ymzhang/.
Shugen Ma (IEEE Fellow, AAIA Fellow, JSME Fellow)
Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou), China
BIO: Professor Shugen Ma (IEEE Fellow, AAIA Fellow, JSME Fellow, Foreign Fellow of the EAJ) received a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering Science from the Tokyo Institute of Technology. He is now a professor of the Robotics and Autonomous Systems Thrust of Systems Hub at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou). Before he joined HKUST (GZ), he was a professor at Ritsumeikan University and a visiting professor at Johns Hopkins University, Shenyang Institute of Automation of CAS, Tianjin University, and Harbin Institute of Technology, respectively. Professor Ma’s research interests include but are not limited to the design and control of environment-adaptive robots, amphibious robots, field robotics, and biologically inspired robotics. He has published over 500 papers in major journals and conference proceedings, developed over 50 novel robot systems with over 80 patents, and supervised 45 doctoral students and over 100 M. Phil. students to graduation. He has also been featured in the list of the world’s top 2% of scientists published by Stanford University.
Prof. Ma is a Professor Emeritus of Ritsumeikan University, a Foreign Fellow of the Engineering Academy of Japan, and the general chair of IROS 2022 (a top robotics conference). He founded the ROBIO conference in 2004, was the general chair of ROBIO 2004, ROBIO 2010, and ROBIO 2016, and served many societies and conferences.
Tong Heng LEE (ACA Fellow)
National University of Singapore, Singapore
BIO: T. H. Lee received the B.A. degree with First Class Honours in the Engineering Tripos from Cambridge University, England, in 1980; the M.Engrg. degree from NUS in 1985; and the Ph.D. degree from Yale University in 1987. He is a Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the National University of Singapore (NUS); and also a Professor in the NUS Graduate School, NUS NGS (ISEP). He was a Past Vice-President (Research) of NUS.
Dr. Lee’s research interests are in the areas of adaptive systems, knowledge-based control, intelligent mechatronics and computational intelligence. He currently holds Associate Editor appointments in the IEEE Transactions in Systems, Man and Cybernetics; and Control Engineering Practice (an IFAC journal). In addition, he was a Past Deputy Editor-in-Chief of IFAC Mechatronics journal.
Dr. Lee was a recipient of the Cambridge University Charles Baker Prize in Engineering; the 2004 ASCC (Melbourne) Best Industrial Control Application Paper Prize; the 2009 IEEE ICMA Best Paper in Automation Prize; and the 2009 ASCC Best Application Paper Prize. He is also a multiple winner of the National University of Singapore FoE Engineering Educator Award and then on the Engineering Educator Honour Roll. And he is the recipient of the 2013 Asian Control Association (ACA) Wook Hyun Kwon Education Prize. Additionally, he is a recipient of the 2019 ACA Outstanding Service Award, having been a past ACA President; and is now on ACA Advisory Board. He is also a Fellow of the prestigious Singapore Academy of Engineering. In addition, he has been elected to the inaugural batch of Asian Control Association (ACA) Fellow.
Angelo Cangelosi
University of Manchester, UK
BIO: Angelo Cangelosi is Professor of Machine Learning and Robotics at the University of Manchester (UK) and co-director and founder of the Manchester Centre for Robotics and AI. He was selected for the award of the European Research Council (ERC) Advanced grant (funded by UKRI). His research interests are in cognitive and developmental robotics, neural networks, language grounding, human robot-interaction and trust, and robot companions for health and social care. Overall, he has secured over £40m of research grants as coordinator/PI, including the ERC Advanced eTALK, the UKRI TAS Trust Node and CRADLE Prosperity, the US AFRL project THRIVE++, and numerous Horizon and MSCAs grants. Cangelosi has produced more than 400 scientific publications. He is Editor-in-Chief of the journals Interaction Studies and IET Cognitive Computation and Systems, and in 2015 was Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Transactions on Autonomous Development. He has chaired numerous international conferences, including ICANN2022 Bristol, and ICDL2021 Beijing. His book “Developmental Robotics: From Babies to Robots” (MIT Press) was published in January 2015, and translated in Chinese and Japanese. His latest book “Cognitive Robotics” (MIT Press), coedited with Minoru Asada, was recently published in 2022 (Chinese translation in 2025).
Speech Title: The Importance of Starting Small with Baby Robots: Developmental Robotics for Language Grounding
Abstract: Cognitive developmental robotics aims to develop robots capable of human-like learning, interaction, and behavior by grounding concrete and abstract concepts in sensorimotor experiences and social interactions. This talk introduced examples on language grounding in cognitive developmental robotics, and explores how principles like “starting small”, “embodied intelligence” and “super-embodiment” can address the limitations of AI tools, such as large language models (LLMs), which rely heavily on large datasets and lack sensorimotor grounding. By integrating incremental, multimodal learning and redefining embodiment to encompass physical, mental, and social processes, we can enable robots to better understand and utilize abstract concepts. The talk will also reflect on the pros and cons of using foundation models in cognitive robotics.