[Seminar] Cooperative Robotics in Healthcare and Beyond: From Assistive Dressing to Automated Science

Dear All,

The Neural Computation Unit (Doya Unit) would like to invite you to the following seminar:

Speaker: Jihong Zhu, University of York

Title: Cooperative Robotics in Healthcare and Beyond: From Assistive Dressing to Automated Science

Abstract: Assistive dressing represents a critical application for healthcare robotics, with the potential to transform daily life for elderly and disabled individuals. This talk addresses fundamental challenges in this area by drawing inspiration from healthcare professionals who naturally perform dressing tasks bimanually. I present a novel cooperative robotics framework that employs two robots working in coordination, an approach unprecedented in previous research. The broader context of this work lies in deformable object manipulation (DOM), a challenging area in robotics due to the unpredictable behavior of flexible materials like clothing. I will discuss the core technical challenges that make DOM difficult and present systematic approaches to overcome them.

Shifting from healthcare to scientific automation, I will also introduce our recent work on robots for chemistry, a crucial step toward creating autonomous systems for chemical research. This work collectively opens new pathways for developing more capable and practical robots that can meaningfully enhance human independence, improve healthcare outcomes, and accelerate scientific discovery.

Bio: 

Dr. Jihong Zhu is a Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in robotics at the School of Physics, Engineering, and Technology, and an affiliated researcher at the Institute for Safe Autonomy, University of York. He leads the Robot-Assisted Living Laboratory (RALLA) at York, where his research primarily focuses on assistive manipulation for caregiving and chemistry automation. Before joining York, he worked as a postdoctoral researcher at Cognitive Robotics, TU Delft, and Honda Research Institute, Europe. Jihong obtained his PhD at the University of Montpellier, France, where he conducted his research at LIRMM, supported by the H2020 VERSATILE project. His work on bimanual assistive dressing received media coverage from the BBC, Independent and IEEE Spectrum. He is presently an Associate Editor for IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L), ICRA, and IROS. He is the founding co-chair of IEEE RAS Working Group on Deformable Object Manipulation. He is a JSPS fellow hosted by Prof. Tomohiro Shibata in Kyutech. 

We hope to see many of you at the seminar.

Sincerely,
Neural Computation Unit
Contact: ncus@oist.jp