Jiewen Lai / 賴捷文

I'm a Research Assistant Professor from the Dept of Electronic Engineering, The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK). I'm interested in flexible robots, mechatronics, robot perception, sensorimotor control, virtual environments and simulations, and robot intelligence.

From 2022 to 2023, I was a Postdoctoral Fellow at CUHK working with Prof. Hongliang Ren. I did my PhD at ME@PolyU, where I was advised by Dr. Henry K. Chu and Prof. Li Cheng.

 SHB313       3943 4343       jiewen.lai [æ] cuhk.edu.hk

Google Scholar / Bio

[06/2025] ✍🏻 Got GRF 2025/26.
[05/2025] ✍🏻 Got the International Research Exploration Seed Grant with Prof Mark Cutkosky from Stanford.
[02/2025] ✍🏻 Great honor to join Biomimetic intelligence and Robotics (JCR Q1, IF: 5.4) as a Young Editorial Board Member.
[01/2025] 📝 Our work with Prof Zhe Min (Shandong U) has been accepted by Nature Reviews Electrical Engineering!
[08/2024] ✍🏻 Honored to serve as an Associate Editor for ICRA 2025.
[08/2024] ✍🏻 Received a mini grant from NSFC'24 [CUHK Press Release].
[05/2024] 🤵 Honored to be invited as a speaker for ICRA workshop: Continuum and Soft Robotics for Medical Applications with Rising Stars on the Stage.
[01/2024] ⛩️ Our workshop C4SR+ has been accepted by ICRA 2024. It will be held in Yokohama, Japan, in May 2024.
[10/2023] ✍🏻 Honored to serve as an Associate Editor for ICRA 2024.
[08/2023] 👨🏻‍🏫 I join the faculty board and the electronic engineering dept at CUHK as a Research Assistant Professor.

tl;dr: Embodying gravity sensation in soft slender robots with a minimalist setup.

tl;dr: A Perspective in Nature Reviews Electrical Engineering discusses how large vision models can enhance vision-related tasks in robot-assisted surgery transforming ‘surgical robots’ into ‘robotic surgeons.’ — Nature Portfolio

tl;dr: Patterning micro particles (cells) using negative dielectrophoresis (nDEP) tweezer in batches and encapsulating them into hydrogel for tissue engineering.

tl;dr: A steering framework for redundant soft manipulators using real-time hand motion and gestures.

tl;dr: Transferring the navigation strategy that a redundant soft robot learns from what it has seen in the SOFA-based virtual world to the real world.

tl;dr: Robotizing any strip-shaped balloons with mechanically programmed 3D-printed shells.

tl;dr: Endowing proprioception to soft robots with embedded eGaIn vein through learning.

tl;dr: Tip pose and whole-body motion planning of a 7-DOF soft robot in constrained environments considering the cable-driven-induced length change of its soft body.

tl;dr: Controlling the soft robot's 3D motion & stiffness in real time with antagonistic cable actuation strategy based on eye-to-hand depth vision.

tl;dr: Configuration constraints on a redundant soft robot, with rapid IK, solved through point cloud projection and image-based liquid suction planning.

tl;dr: Steering and servoing a two-segment soft robot's 2D pose with eye-to-hand vision in real-time - regardless of the static payload.

tl;dr: Utilizing a lightweight MLP model to learn a redundant soft robot's IK through its simplified DH model.

Senior Member, Chinese Mechanical Engineering Society (CMES)
Member, IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (RAS)
Member, Chinese Association of Automation (CAA)

Associate Editor (AE): ICRA'26, ICRA'25, ICRA'24
Workshop Organizer
     - The 3rd C⁴SR+ workshop at IROS 2025
     - The 2nd C⁴SR+ workshop at ICRA 2024
Guest Editor: Intelligence & Robotics, Actuators
Reviewer: T-RO, T-MECH, RA-L, T-II, T-IE, T-ASE, IEEE Access, JFR, Nonlinear Dyn, IJMRCAS, Biomim Intell Robot, Sensors
Reviewer for conferences: ICRA'26, IROS'25, ICRA'25, ICSR'24, IROS'24, RCAR'24, ICRA'24, RoboSoft'23, ARM'22, ICRA'22, ICRA'21, ICAR'21, AIM'20, CASE'20, IROS'19, ROBIO'19

ELEG4701 Intelligent Interactive Robot Practice (24'Spring, 24'Fall, 25'Fall)
ELEG4998 Final Year Project I
ELEG4999 Final Year Project II