A Robotics Engineer’s Journey: from Academia to Entrepreneurship

Abstract

Robotics is a deep tech field that involves the integration of hardware and software. In this seminar, Prof. Chen will share his experience transitioning from an academic faculty member with a 30-year career in robotics academic R&D to becoming a robotics entrepreneur with two university spin-off robotics companies: Transforma Robotics, focusing on the built environment sector, and Hand Plus Robot, focusing on the logistics sector. His experiences include team building, technology management, R&D and market directions, fundraising, as well as scaling-up. Prof. Chen will also share some of his thoughts and view on the future development of robotics industry from practitioner perspective, which is a drastically different one from academic perspective.

Speaker

Prof. I-Ming Chen received his BSc degree from National Taiwan University in 1986, and MSc and PhD degrees from California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA in 1989 and 1994 respectively. He is currently a Full Professor in the School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering of Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore, Co-Director of the Centre for Advanced Robotic Technology and Innovation (CARTIN) in NTU, Technical Advisor to National Robotics Research Programme Office, Singapore, and Certified Patent Valuation Analyst (CPVA). He was Editor-in-chief of IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics from 2020 to 2022, and Director of Robotics Research Centre (NTU) from 2013 to 2017. Prof. Chen is a Fellow of the Singapore Academy of Engineering, Fellow of IEEE and Fellow of ASME. He also served as the General Chairman of the 2017 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA 2017) held in Singapore. His research interests encompass in logistics and construction robots, wearable devices, human-robot interaction, and industrial automation. Furthermore, Prof. Chen is the founder of Transforma Robotics Pte Ltd, a company focused on developing robots for the construction industry, and Hand Plus Robotics Pte Ltd, dedicated to the development of robotics and AI solutions for the logistics and manufacturing industry.