Plenary Speech

Hyouk Ryeol Choi is a Professor in the School of Mechanical Engineering at Sungkyunkwan University, Suwon, South Korea, where he has led the Robotics Laboratory since 1995. He received his B.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering from Seoul National University (1984), his M.S. degree from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) (1986), and his Ph.D. degree from the Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH) (1994).

His professional career includes roles as an Associate Research Engineer at the IT Research Center, LG Electronics (1986-1989), a Postdoctoral Researcher at Kyoto University, Japan (1993-1995), a JSPS Fellow at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), Japan (1999-2000), and a Visiting Professor at the University of Washington, Seattle, USA (2008-2009).

Prof. Choi was elected an IEEE Fellow in 2019 for his contributions to robotic interactive sensing. He has served in numerous leadership roles within the international robotics community, including as General Chair of IEEE CASE 2012 and as Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Robotics and Technical Editor of IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics. He currently serves as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Intelligent & Robotic Systems (Springer). He also co-founded and serves as Founding Co-Chair of the IEEE RAS Technical Committee on Robot Hand, Grasping and Manipulation.

In 2020, Prof. Choi founded AIDIN Robotics Ltd., a startup specializing in force-aware robotics and advanced force/torque sensing technologies, where he currently serves as CEO. His research focuses on Physical AI and contact-rich robotic manipulation, with particular emphasis on learning-based control strategies for dexterous manipulation in unstructured environments. His broader research interests encompass soft robotics, novel robotic mechanisms, dexterous robotic hands, grasping and manipulation, and field applications of robotic systems.

Nikhil Chopra is a Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Maryland, College Park. Prior to joining the University of Maryland, he was a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Coordinated Science Laboratory, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, from 2006 to 2007. 

He received the Bachelor of Technology (Honors) degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, India, in 2001, and the M.S. degree in General Engineering in 2003 and the Ph.D. degree in Systems and Entrepreneurial Engineering in 2006, both from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. 

His research interests include control of networked robotic systems, bilateral teleoperation, and applied nonlinear control. He is the co-author of the book Passivity-Based Control and Estimation in Networked Robotics.

Prof. Chopra is a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME, 2025) and was a finalist for the Invention of the Year Award from the University of Maryland in 2025. His research group has also received several recognitions, including the Best Control Framework for Autonomous Navigation and Control Award from the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society Technical Committee on Algorithms for Planning and Control of Robot Motion at IROS 2024, as well as a Finalist Best Student Paper Award at the Indian Control Conference 2022. He has served on several editorial boards, including as an Associate Editor for Automatica, IEEE Transactions on Control of Network Systems, and IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control.

Prof. Tzuu-Hseng S. Li is a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering at National Cheng Kung University (NCKU), Tainan, Taiwan, where he also holds joint appointments in the Department of Psychology and the Miin Wu School of Computing. He received his B.S. degree from Tatung Institute of Technology in 1981, and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from NCKU in 1985 and 1989, respectively. He previously served as Director of the Center for Intelligent Robotics and Automation at NCKU (2013–2022) and Dean of the College of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at National United University (2009–2012).

Prof. Li has served as President of the Robotics Society of Taiwan (RST) and the Chinese Automatic Control Society (CACS). He currently serves as Co-Editor-in-Chief of iRobotics, Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Cybernetics, and Honorary Vice President of the Federation of International RoboSport Association (FIRA). Recognised as a Fellow of both RST and CACS, he has been consistently listed among the World's Top 2% Scientists by Stanford University. His research interests include artificial intelligence, humanoid robots, AI-based service robots, fuzzy systems and control, and mechatronics.

Pei-Chun Lin is a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at National Taiwan University (NTU), Taipei, Taiwan. He is currently in a secondment as the General Director at the Delta Robotics Innovation Center (DRIC) at Delta Electronics, Inc. His research interests include robotics, mechanical design, sensor design/fusion, control, locomotion, and robotic applications.

Pei-Chun Lin received B.S. and M.S. degrees in mechanical engineering from NTU in 1996 and 1998, respectively, as well as an M.S. degree in electrical engineering and computer science and a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, U.S.A. in 2005. He then worked as a postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania before moving to NTU in 2007. He served as an associate editor of the IEEE Transactions on Robotics from 2016 to 2020, a technical editor of the IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics from 2021 to 2024, and an associate editor of IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters from 2022 to 2025. He served as Chairman of the Robotics Society of Taiwan (RST) from 2024 to 2025. He received the Ta-You Wu Memorial Award, FutureTech Breakthrough Award, and Outstanding Research Award from the National Science and Technology Council, Taiwan. He also received the Distinguished Teaching Awards from NTU, Institute of Engineering Education, Taiwan (IEET), and Taiwan Society of Precision Engineering (TSPE). He is a Fellow of The American Society of Mechanical Engineers, USA (ASME), The Institute of Engineering and Technology, UK (IET), The Robotics Society of Taiwan (RST), and The Society of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics of the Republic of China (STAM).