CV&Publications

You can find my detailed CV here

Education

• Ph.D. (with distinction) in Biorobotics at Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, 2022-2025
• Exchange Ph.D. student at EPFL, Aug-Oct, 2024
• M.Sc. (with distinction) in Control Systems at Imperial College, 2020-2021

Work experience

• Nov. 2021- Sep. 2022: Research Assistant
  • King’s College London and Tsinghua University
  • Research about optical tactile sensors, including sensor simulation, Sim2Real transfer learning, and reinforcement learning
  • Supervisors: Prof. Shan Luo and Prof. Bin Fang

Five Representative Publications

(Please refer to Google Scholar for the complete publication list.)

Z. Chen, Q. Guan, J. Hughes, et al., “A Versatile Neural Network Configuration Space Planning and Control Strategy for Modular Soft Robot Arms,” in IEEE Transactions on Robotics, vol. 41, pp. 4269-4282, 2025.

Z. Chen, X. Ren, Y. Hamamatsu, et al., “AdapJ: An Adaptive Extended Jacobian Controller for Soft Manipulators,” in IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics, 2025. (accepted)

Z. Chen, F. Renda, A. Le Gall, et al., “Data-driven Methods Applied to Soft Robot Modeling and Control: A Review,” in IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering, vol. 22, pp. 2241-2256, 2025.

Z. Chen, D. Wu, Q. Guan, D. Hardman, F. Renda, J. Hughes, T. G. Thuruthe, C. Della Santina, B. Mazzolai, H. Zhao, and C. Stefanini, “A Survey on Soft Robot Adaptability: Implementations, Applications, and Prospects,” in IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine (accepted)

Z. Chen, M. Bernabei, V. Mainardi, et al., “A Novel and Accurate BiLSTM Configuration Controller for Modular Soft Robots with Module Number Adaptability,” in Soft Robotics (accepted)

Academic Service

Peer Review Contributions:

T-RO, TMECH, T-ASE, SoRo, TIE, T-MRB, RAS, RA-L, IROS, ICRA

Workshops:

I am the main organizer of the serial workshops ‘SOFT Frontiers’:

IROS 2025 ‘The SOFT Frontier 2: Practical applications in soft robotics’

IROS 2024 ‘The SOFT Frontier: Adaptive technologies in soft robotics’