Research of the Month 月度科研之光

Academic staff at the Department of Mechatronics and Robotics conduct research at both macro scale and nano scale. Dr Pengfei Song, leader of the Intelligent Microsystems Laboratory at XJTLU, has done some impactful research in developing novel automated microfluidic systems and microfluidic nanosensors. One of his research work is the development of the robotic microfluidic system for studying the small model organisms with the diameter of less than 100 microns. The enabling element in this system is a so-called microfluidic chip, which is as small as a credit card, but it can integrate up to thousands of microchannels and valves and manipulate the fluidics within the channels. Video 1 demonstrates the automatic control of microvalves in microfluidic systems to enable the complex operations of fluids, just like the circuits and transistors in IC chips.

Therefore, it can perform complicated tasks such as performing a microinjection/microsurgery for small organisms in a streamlined manner, as demonstrated in Video 2.

This work has been highly recognized by researchers from Univ. of Nagoya, Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology of Chinese Academy of Sciences, New York Univ., among others. This project received several awards from the community including the Best Paper Award in Microfluidics Symposium at ASME International Mechanical Engineering Congress & Exposition, the Best Conference Paper Award and the Best Automation Paper Award Finalist at IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), and the Editor’s Pick Article Award and the Best Paper Award Finalist from AIP’s Biomicrofluidics.

智能机电的老师们不仅进行宏观世界的研究，而且引导纳米世界的研究工作。微纳工程与自动化主任宋鹏飞博士专注于纳米研究，在微流控制领域做出了具有影响力的研究成果。他利用工程学知识与技能来促进生命科学的研究以及提高医疗健康的实践。

在西交利物浦大学智能微系统实验室，学者们进行多学科交叉的研究，重点是开发新型的自动化微流控系统和微流控纳米生物传感器。其中，有一项工作是研究小型模型生物(直径小于100微米)的机器人微流控系统。该系统中的关键组件叫做微流控芯片，它与信用卡一样小，但可以集成多达数千个液体微流道和阀门（类比于 IC 芯片中的流过电流的电路和晶体管）并对液体进行全自动操控。就像视频1中所展示的通过在微流控芯片中全自动微阀的开合控制，实现复杂的流体操作如混合、输运、定量等。

因此，它可以执行复杂的液相任务，例如以流水线的模式对小型模型生物进行显微注射/显微手术，如视频2所示。

我们的这项工作得到了来自众多高校的科研人员的高度认可，如名古屋大学、中国科学院遗传与发育生物学研究所、纽约大学等。该项目也获得了多个国际奖项，包括 ASME 国际机械工程大会和博览会-微流控最佳论文奖、IEEE 机器人与自动化国际会议 (ICRA) 最佳会议论文和最佳自动化论文奖提名奖，以及美国物理协会期刊 Biomicrofluidics 的编辑精选奖和年度最佳论文提名奖。

"Standing in the frontier, facing the industrial demand, seeking the technological innovation" is the scientific research guideline of Dr. Min Chen’s team. An excellent industrial product, from the external configuration, color application, to the essential function, reliability requirements, is a complex harmonious coexistence. Though industrial products have various structures, there are many common scientific needs in use, like material selection, multi-physics coupling impact and mechanical characterizations.

As an outstanding instructor, Dr. Chen is not only good at cultivating young students, but also has extensive knowledge and skills in structure design and analysis. She has passion in scientific research and exploration. Her expertise focuses on multi-scale analysis of composite materials, multi-physics coupling analysis of structures and smart materials, and product design. She is well experienced in modeling the accurate physical models, simulating the responses of the structure under the coupled physical impacts. Through numerical simulation, the fundamental mechanism is comprehensively studied and the design schemes will be optimized. And sometimes even completely new solution is inspired.

In the video, parts of industrial research projects were illustrated, which were led by Dr. Chen and completed in recent three years, for instance, the structural analysis and design of controller for e-vehicle motor, cooling channel optimization design, thermal analysis of IC package, extreme lightweight design of exoskeletons, biomechanical analysis of orthodontic schemes. The research output greatly shortened the R&D time and reduced the R&D cost, meanwhile brought the new cutting-edge research foundation funding.

抓共性、提层次

“立足基础前沿，面向产业需求，寻求技术创新”是陈敏博士团队的科研理念。好的工业产品，从外在构型，色彩应用，到本质功能，可靠性需求，是一个复杂的和谐共存。工业产品结构多样，但在材料的使用、多物理场的耦合以及力学特性上有着很多共性的科学需求。

作为“优秀指导教师”的陈敏博士不仅善于塑造培育年轻的学生也是结构分析专家。她热爱科研探索，研究方向主攻复合材料多尺度计算，结构多物理场仿真，智能材料力学分析和产品设计。擅长于有限元仿真建立准确真实物理参数模型，通过各种技术手段，加强对多物理场共同作用下对产品响应的理解和认识，从而优化设计流程，甚至激发灵感，带来全新的设计方案。

视频中是陈敏博士带领团队近三年进行的部分产业技术案例，包括新能源汽车电机控制器结构分析设计、电机流道流固热优化设计、芯片封装温度场分析、外骨骼结构极限轻量化设计、牙齿正畸方案生物力学分析等。研究成果极大地缩短了企业的研发时间，降低了研发成本, 同时带来了新的基础研究项目。

Happy Ox Year! I would like to take this opportunity to wish everybody a prosperous and productive new coming year.

To engage with industry is one of the practices that is embedded in our research-led teaching initiative. The project demonstrated in the video is one example of collaborating with industry by myself. Owing to the successful research and development in wireless mesh networks, I was approached by the company in early 2010 to work on this innovative project. I was impressed with the commercial idea and realized the potentials of apply advanced technologies in this project. Based on my understanding of development of future networking technologies, I envisioned that this project could have the following impacts:

(1) No. 1 in the world of an Internet of Things (IoT) product for airport services;

(2) cloud computing could be implemented because of the acquisition of large volume of data;

(3) indoor positioning technologies were hot but very challenging, which could be a very good research direction;

(4) extra commercial and scientific values brought in by the big data and the generation of new big data analytical methods.

With the financial support from the industry partner, a scalable cloud and IoT system was developed for the company to operate these trolleys at airports. In addition, scientific problems were identified in the sectors of indoor positioning and group user services. Great efforts were put in these two sectors with my researchers and some impactful outcomes were produced, including winning the first place in sound group in 2018 Microsoft Indoor Localisation Competition with Prof. Zhi Wang’s team from Zhejiang University, and publishment of several high-quality papers on IEEE transactions. The quality of publications was classified as world-leading research by the UK Research Excellence Framework (REF) experts. Further research projects were secured and commercial products were also produced based on these outcomes.

Based on previous outcomes, research has been extended into acoustic localization, communications and sensing; user-centred navigation and recommendation services for group users; and industrial IoT and industrial machine vision. Hopefully contributions could be made in these areas and the quality of research and teaching could be enhanced.

Prof. Xinheng Wang

Head of Department of Mechatronics and Robotic

校企合作，挑战极限

谨此新春佳节之际，恭祝各位新春快乐，工作家庭事事顺心，在新的一年里人人都有新的突破。

与企业进行良好互动，促进和产业的紧密合作是智能机电的老师们践行“研究导向型教学”的一个重要组成部分，在此过程中我们收获了具有一定影响力的成果。

视频中的智能手推车就是智能机电系主任王新珩教授与企业合作开发的一个项目。2010年初，他在无线mesh网络领域取得了一些成就，被同学引荐到这个公司进行技术上的合作。基于对专业知识的了解和市场的判定，他认为这是一个极有前途的项目，因为：

（1）典型的机场物联网项目，世界上没有类似的产品；

（2）机场会有大量的用户，可以运用当时还处于起步阶段的云计算技术；

（3）核心的室内定位技术极具挑战，在学术界是一个热点；

（4）大数据所带来的升值价值。

于是，在之后的研发过程中，王教授从企业技术的发展凝练出学术挑战难题，带领团队从学术的角度出发，在设计了一个可延展性的云平台和物联网架构之后，将所有的精力都投入到室内定位和团队用户的大数据分析研究当中，并在这两个领域取得了较有影响力的成果。

在室内定位领域，王新珩教授和浙江大学的王智教授带领团队在微软全球室内定位大赛中获得声波组定位的第一名；团队用户的大数据研究也被英国REF（Research Excellence Framework）专家认定为世界领先。在这些技术的助力下，企业获得了国内前瞻性投资能力超强的中金公司的资金投入。

从学术角度上，也将研究进一步延展为声波定位、通信和探测；团队用户的个性化定位导航和服务推荐以及工业物联网和工业机器视觉。研发团队仍期望能在新领域的研究上有所突破，助力该行业的企业发展。

王新珩教授

智能机电系主任

To maintain high-quality teaching is always the first priority at XJTLU. At School of Advanced Technology, all the engineering programmes, including our BEng Mechatronics and Robotic Systems have been accredited by the UK’s Institute of Engineering and Technology. Teaching was delivered strictly according to the standard required by IET.

How to integrate high-standard research into teaching is a dream to the students, but a challenge to the academic staff. New staff member Dr Jie Sun has demonstrated the art of integrating research and teaching. Dr. Sun graduated from National University of Singapore and joined our department in the summer of 2020. Her research is in rehabilitation and system design. Her research work in interactive rehabilitation device design has been presented in a few top design conferences. She has led teams of undergraduate students to work closely with a local hospital and delivered a suite of toys to support the rehabilitation. The student teams have won a few regional design competition awards, and filed quite a few utility patents.

She said “It is my honor to join this department. I wish to apply more advanced mechatronic technologies in rehabilitation area, benefit patents and their families for better life. Also, I wish to work closely with other members of staff to perform more innovative multidisciplinary research.”

Prof. Xinheng Wang

Head of Department of Mechatronics and Robotic

研究导向型教学提升教学新高度

西浦将高质量的教学作为学校工作的核心。在西浦智能工程学院，包括我们《机械电子工程》在内的所有的工程专业都获得了英国工程技术学会的认证。所有的教学都严格按照学会的要求进行。

对于学生来说，如果能在学习当中学到最新的科学技术无异能受益颇多；但是对于教师来说将高水准地科研融于到教学当中，是一个巨大地挑战。需要知识智慧并行并付出大量的时间。智能机电系的孙捷博士就是一位优秀的研究导向型教学的践行者。孙捷博士毕业于新加坡国立大学，于2020年夏天入职智能机电系。她的研究领域是交互式机电一体化康复产品设计，她的研究成果多次发表在国际顶级设计会议上。所指导的学生团队，多次获得区域设计比赛大奖，并获得多项专利。这样的教学不仅能创造出新颖地研究成果，而且能激发学生的学习热情和主动性，更能创造创业机会。

孙捷博士说“我很荣幸加入智能机电系，希望把机电领域的先进技术更多的应用在康复医疗领域，使更多患者家庭受益，改善他们的生活质量。实现人们美好生活的愿望。也希望有机会老师们紧密合作展开跨学科的创新研究”。

王新珩教授

智能机电系主任

The new members of staff have the priority to receive the full support from the department and the school. In this inaugural launch of this initiative, Dr. Yuqing Chen’s research in Bionic Robot Arm is introduced. As a new member of staff, Dr. Chen graduated from Singapore University of Technology and Design and joined us in the summer of 2020. The control method that he has developed is an innovative approach for the robots to mimic human actions. He said “I am impressed by the multidisciplinary background and world-leading research of the staff at MEC. We have solid background in robotic control systems, bio-inspired engineering, networked systems and intelligent mechatronics. I am honored to join MEC, I wish to work closely with other members of staff to perform innovative multidisciplinary research and maintain my research at the forefront of the world.”

智能机电系把新的员工放在首位，优先支持新员工的工作。陈宇青博士毕业于新加坡科技设计大学，于2020年夏天入职智能机电的大家庭。他在仿生机械手臂领域的研究工作展示了世界领先的水平，极大地缩短了系统调试周期并提高了控制性能，使机械手臂仿真人类活动的应用提前了一大步。他说“西浦智能工程学院的老师展示了极高的科研水平，他们的多学科背景和世界领先的研究给我留下了深刻的印象，智能机电系在机器人控制，仿生工程，网络系统和智能机电一体化方面已经拥有了雄厚的科研实力。我很荣幸加入智能机电系，也希望有机会老师们紧密合作展开跨学科的创新研究，并将我的研究成果持续保持在世界前列”。

Along with the launch of this initiative, we have also presented MEC from a TV broadcast of CCTV. If you have any comments about MEC, our research or would like to collaborate with us, please do contact us at SAT.MEC@xjtlu.edu.cn.

借此机会，我们也借助央视的采访报道来介绍一下智能机电系。如果你对我们的研究有任何的评价或者反馈，或者想与我们合作，请通过email：SAT.MEC@xjtlu.edu.cn联系我们。