Prof. Chengdong Wu
Director of Intelligent Robot Research Centre
Northeastern University, China

Biography: Professor Wu got the M.Sc. degree in Automatic Control Theory and Application from the Tsinghua University, China, 1988. He got the Ph.D. in Industrial Automation from the NEU, China, 1994. He finished the Post-Doctoral Research from the University of Wales, UK, 1997. He has finished more than of 30 research projects funded by the Chinese government and industrial fields. About 300 of journal and conference papers and 9 books have been published. 13 research prizes and teaching prizes were awarded from the Chinese government. His main research interesting is included machine vision, image processing, robot control, and machine learning. 

 

Prof. Yong Yue
Fellow IET, FIMechE, FHEA, Head of Department
Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, China

Biography: Yong Yue (BEng Northeastern China, PhD Heriot-Watt UK, CEng, FIET, FIMechE, FHEA) is a Professor at the Department of Computing, and Director of the Virtual Engineering Centre (VEC) and Suzhou Municipal Key Lab for Intelligent Virtual Engineering. He was Head of the Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering (2013-2019). Prior to joining XJTLU, he had held various positions in industry and academia in China and the UK, including Engineer, Project Manager, Professor, Director of Research and Head of Department. Professor Yue has experience in learning and teaching, research and enterprise as well as management. He has led a variety of research and professional projects supported by major funding bodies and industry. He has also lead curriculum development at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. He has nearly 300 peer-reviewed publications and supervised 38 PhD students to successful completion.

 

 

Prof. Xinheng Wang
Director of XJTLU-uGo Robotics Research Centre
Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, China

Biography: Prof. Wang was the founding Head of Department of Mechatronics and Robotics. He is an IET Fellow and a senior member of IEEE. He is also a team leader of Talented Jiangsu Innovation and Entrepreneur Programme. He has broad academic working experience in China, England, Wales, and Scotland for more than 20 years. He has extensive research experience in Internet of Things (IoT), wireless mesh networks, indoor positioning, big data analytics, and applications for smart cities. Along with more 30+ research projects sponsored from the EU, UK EPSRC, Innovate UK, China NSFC, and industry, his research in each area has led to an impactful industrial product. For example, the smart trolley, which has been deployed at more than 30 airports in China, he has developed with industrial partner is the first in the world to provide an IoT solution aiming at providing intelligent airport services for passengers. His collaborative research in acoustic localisation with Prof. Zhi Wang at Zhejiang University has won the first place in Microsoft Indoor Localisation Competition in sound group. He has 260+ publications and filed dozens of patents, including 6 granted patents in the US, Japan, and South Korea, and 18 granted patents in China. His research had been classified as World Leading at the UK's REF assessment. The highest citation number of a single technical paper on Google Scholar is over 700. Overall citation is over 5600. He is currently leading a university-industry collaborative research centre XJTLU-uGo Robotics Research Centre with sponsorship from industry of multi-million yuan to develop robots for passenger services and airport services. To this end, some significant achievements have been made, including a Deep SLAM and Navigation system where accuracy of localization could reach 3 cm in real-world applications and response time for path planning could be reduced to milli-second level from dozen of seconds. Apart from research in robotic SLAM and navigation, his other research interests include intelligent manufacturing and healthcare. In intelligent manufacturing, he is investigating a system dubbed as VisionTwin to integrate industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), edge computing, machine vision, digital twin, and artificial intelligence to promote the intelligence of manufacturing. One application example is condition monitoring of overhead power lines, where a 3-dimensional space could be created on a typical 2D camera. In healthcare, he has led a team to develop a novel application of diagnosing COVID-19 on smartphones by monitoring users' breathing. In addition, he is investigating technologies for motion and posture detection of users indoors by acoustic analysis on smartphones. 

 

 

Prof. Shigeo Akashi
Distinguished Instructors of Cisco Networking Academy in Japan
Research Institute for Science & Technology, Tokyo University of Science, Japan

Biography: Shigeo Akashi was certified as a Ph.D. holder by Tokyo Institute of Technology in 1987 and he is now a professor at Tokyo University of Science. He was the chair professor at the Department of Information Sciences at this university from 2015 through 2016. As for the academic and educational activities, he has been a member of the Experts Committee leading scientific education for Japanese senior high schools, which is authorized by Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japanese Government since 2016. He is interested in the interdisciplinary research area ranging from applied mathematics and information sciences. As for the aspect of applied mathematics, he was an invited speaker in Asian Mathematical Conference which was held at Busan City in Korea in 2013, and moreover, he was a member of Scientific Committee for Asian Conference on Nonlinear Analysis and Optimization which was approved as a satellite international conference of International Congress of Mathematicians 2014. As for the aspect of information science, he has been certified as Distinguished Cisco Certified Active Instructor by Cisco Networking Academy, which is administrated by Cisco Systems, since 2012, and moreover, he was awarded 2018 APSCIT Fellowship by Asia Pacific Society for Computing and Information Technology. His joint research work with RKC Instruments Co. Ltd., which is the largest company in all Japanese companies producing temperature-measuring instruments, named as "An algorithm for discriminating the inside of a closed curve from the outside" has been approved with Patent ID. 4760768 by Japan Patent Office attached to the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry of Japanese Government in 2011.