Guest Speaker: Prof. ZHU Jihong
School of Physics, Engineering and Technology
University of York
Jihong Zhu is an assistant 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 deformable objects and assistive manipulation. 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, 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.
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 robotic dressing assistance. 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 that is unprecedented in previous research. Through extensive experimental validation and ablation studies, I demonstrate the effectiveness of the bimanual cooperative approach, showing significant improvements over traditional single-robot methods. This work opens new pathways for developing more capable and practical assistive robots that can meaningfully enhance human independence and quality of life.
The broader context of this work lies in deformable object manipulation (DOM), a notoriously 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. The applications extend beyond assistive care to industrial settings, including cable harness management and other manufacturing tasks involving flexible components.
