About Me

I am currently a Reader in Robotics and AI at the Department of Engineering, King’s College London, where I lead the Robot Perception Lab (RPL). I am an enthusiastic and dedicated researcher doing research on robot perception with vision and tactile sensing, leveraging machine learning and computer vision algorithms with applications in robotics, e.g., robot perception, object recognition & localisation, and multimodal sensing fusion.

I was a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) at the Department of Computer Science, the University of Liverpool, from 2018 to 2021, and was Director for the smARTLab at the Department. Prior to that, I was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Harvard University from 2017 to 2018, and at the University of Leeds from 2016 to 2017. I received the PhD degree in Robotics from King’s College London, in 2016. I was a Visiting Scientist at the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), MIT, in 2016. I am a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA).

Contact

Email: shan.luo at kcl.ac.uk

Openings

• PhD Opening: EPSRC Industrial Doctoral Landscape Award (IDLA) Studentship in Robotics and AI Closing date: 15 April 2025.

• PhD Opening: Studentship funded by EPSRC CDT in Advanced Engineering for Personalised Surgery & Intervention Closing date: when filled.

• PhD studentships (home/international fees) available, contact me with a copy of your up-to-date CV if you are interested!

• PhD Opening: One King’s-China Scholarship Council PhD position is available, open to Chinese students. Deadline: 1st January 2025 (currently closed).

• Commonwealth PhD Scholarships

• Fulbright Postgraduate Scholarship (for American students)

• Visiting Research Studentships

Please email me with a copy of your CV if you are interested in the above opportunities. Visit Opportunities for all the opportunities.

News

• May 2025: I will serve as an Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Robotics (T-RO) from July 2025.
• May 2025: The 3rd London Summer School in Robotics and AI will take place at King’s on 25th June, this year’s theme is “A Robot Touch of AI”, come to join us! registration site
• Apr 2025: Our RoTipBot is accepted to T-RO, congratultions to Jiaqi, Xuyang and the team! paper website
• Apr 2025: One paper is accepted to R:SS 2025, congratulations to Stone, Hao and the team! paper website
• Mar 2025: We have one EPSRC PhD Studentship in Robotics and AI available, funded by the EPSRC CDT in Advanced Engineering for Personalised Surgery & Intervention, send me a copy of your CV if you are interested in joining our lab! link
• Feb 2025: One paper is accepted to CVPR 2025, congratultions to Kostas and the team! paper
• Feb 2025: We have one IDLA PhD Studentship available, funded by the EPSRC and Unilever, send me a copy of your CV if you are interested in joining our lab! link Closing date: 15 April 2025.
• Feb 2025: I have been invited to share my insights into accelerating sustainable manufacturing with robotics in the “Engineering Sustainability: Where to next?” Panel.
• Jan 2025: Our paper on cross-sensor force prediction has been accepted to ICRA 2025, congratulations to Zhuo and the team! paper
• Dec 2024: Our 6th ViTac workshop has been accepted to ICRA 2025, see you in Atlanta!
• Dec 2024: Our paper on multi-modality tactile sensor has been accepted to T-RO Special Collection in Tactile Robotics, congratulations to Dandan and the team! paper
• Nov 2024: Our Royal Society International Exchange Award has been granted.
• Sep 2024: Our paper on topology alignment for face recognition has been accepted to NeuRIPS 2024, congratulations to Yang and the team! paper code and models
• Sep 2024: Welcome Tuan Nguyen from JAIST and Hengfei Zhao from Tsinghua University to start visiting our group!
• Sep 2024: Welcome Zhiyuan Wu, Yongqiang Zhao, Yupeng Wang to start their PhD at our group!
• Aug 2024: Our tactile sensing technologies have been shortlisted for the 2024 Robotics and Automation Awards!
• Aug 2024: Our paper on transiting between marker and markerless optical tactile sensing is accepted to RA-L, congratulations to Ni and Zhuo! [paper link] [website]
• July 2024: One paper is accepted to ECCV 2024, congratultions to Kostas!
• June 2024: Two papers are accepted to IROS 2024, congratulations to Zhuo, Jagoda and Jiaqi!
• June 2024: Welcome Yang Liu to start his PhD at our group!
• May 2024: Congratulations to Dr Kun Wang for securing the K. C. Wong Postdoctoral Fellowship! He will join us as a postdoctoral researcher.
• May 2024: I am elevated as an IEEE Senior Member.
• April 2024: Our paper on fast simulation of optical tactile sensors is accepted to RA-L, congratulations to Yongqiang, Kun and the team! [paper link] [website]
• March 2024: We have PhD stduentships (home/international fees) available, contact me with a copy of your up-to-date CV if you are interested!
• March 2024: Our paper on multimodal zero-shot learning for tactile texture recognition has been accepted to Robotics and Autonomous Systems, congratulations to Guan and the team! [paper link]
• March 2024: Our review on road surface defect detection has been accepted to IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems, congratulations to Jongmin and the team! [paper link]
• Feb 2024: I will give a talk at the 4th International Conference on Embodied Intelligence on 20th March, look forward to the discussions!
• Jan 2024: We have three papers accepted to ICRA 2024 (2 x ICRA, 1 x RA-L), congratulations to Jongmin, Zhonglin and Dandan, as well as all the co-authors, see you in Yokohama!
• Jan 2024: We will organise the 6th UK Robot Manipulation Workshop at King’s in 2024, look forwarding to having the workshop along the River Thames and stay tuned!
• Jan 2024: Our work on multimodal perception received the Best Workshop Poster at the 5th UK Robot Manipulation Workshop, congratulations to Jagoda and Jiaqi!
• Jan 2024: I will give a talk at the 5th UK Robot Manipulation Workshop, join us on 11th and 12th Jan 2024 in Oxford!
• Dec 2023: Our 5th ViTac workshop has been accepted to ICRA 2024, see you in Yokohama!
• Dec 2023: One A*STAR and King’s College London PhD Studentship (October 2024 Entry) is available. Applications are accepted from citizens of the UK, the EU, the USA, Canada, Latin America, and Australia.
• Oct 2023: Our review on robotic perception of transparent objects has been accepted to the IEEE Transactions on Artificial Intelligence, congratulations to Jiaqi and the team! [paper link]
• Oct 2023: I serve as an Associate Editor for ICRA 2024.
• Sep 2023: I am promoted to Reader, thanks to all the RPL group members, collaborators, colleagues and funders!
• Sep 2023: Our work on Inverse Image Frequecy to improve long-tailed recognition has been accepted to the IEEE Transactions on Image Processing, congratulations to Kostas and the team! [paper link]
• July 2023: Our work on GelFinger, the first multi-angle optical tactile sensor, has been accepted to RA-L, congratulations to Zhonglin and the team! [paper link]
• July 2023: Our BridgeAI project has been funded.
• July 2023: I will give a talk entitled “Empowering Robotic Manipulation: Bridging Sim-to-Real with Tactile Representations” at RSS 2023 Workshop Interdisciplinary Exploration of Generalizable Manipulation Policy Learning: Paradigms and Debates on 10th July.
• June 2023: Our work on tactile representation learning with masked autoencoders has been accepted to IROS 2023, congratulations to Guan and the team!
• June 2023: Our Robot Live Lab demo has been successully livestreamed on YouTube, check out this link for the recording of our demo!
• June 2023: I am honoured to receive the Early Career Award from the UK-RAS!
• May 2023: Our work on leveraging multi-modal sensing for robotic insertion tasks in R&D laboratories has been accepted to CASE 2023, congratulations to Aaron and the team!
• Apr 2023: Our work on simulating optical tactile sensors of complex morphologies has been accepted to RSS 2023 conference, congratulations to Daniel and the team! [paper link] [project website]
• Apr 2023: Our paper on domain adaptation for Sim2Real transfer of tactile images is accepted to IEEE Transactions on Measurement and Instrumentation, congratulations to Kun and the team!
• Mar 2023: Our TouchRoller paper is accepted to Sensors, congratulations to Guanqun and the team! paper link
• Feb 2023: We will organise a Special Issue in Tactile Robotics at IEEE Transactions on Robotics (T-RO), stay tuned!
• Feb 2023: I have been selected to join the UKRI Future Leaders Fellows Development Network’s PATHWAYS programme.
• Jan 2023: Two papers accepted to ICRA 2023, congratulations to Guanquan, Jongmin, and the team!
• Jan 2023: Our application to the Robot Live Lab event has been successful, stay tuned on our live streaming of robotics research at our Centre for Robotics Research!
• Jan 2023: Our paper on dynamic path planning is accepted to Sustainable Energy Technologies and Assessments, congratulations to Henry and the team! paper link
• Jan 2023: Our Tacchi paper has been accepted to RA-L, congratulations to Zixi and the team! website
• Dec 2022: Our ViTac workshop has been accepted to ICRA 2023, see you in London!
• Dec 2022: Congratulations to Yiming, Hai-Ning and the team for winning the Best Paper Award at ACM SIGGRAPH VRCAI 2022 for our paper “Teleoperation of a Fast Omnidirectional Unmanned Ground Vehicle in the Cyber-Physical World via a VR Interface”!
• Nov 2022: Welcome Zhenxi (Nathan) to join our group!
• Nov 2022: Our paper on Skill Generalization of Tubular Object Manipulation with Tactile Sensing and Sim2Real Learning has been accepted to Robotics and Autonomous Systems, congratulations to Kun and the team!
• Nov 2022: I will give a talk at the 4th UK Robot Manipulation Workshop, join us on 12th and 13th Jan 2023 in Bristol!
• Oct 2022: We start a new one-year project funded by Unilever!
• Oct 2022: I am invited to give a keynote talk at the French research group in Robotics (GdR) days.
• Oct 2022: I am invited to give an invited talk at Humanoid Robotics Forum.
• Sep 2022: I will be an Associate Editor for ICRA 2023.
• Aug 2022: I am now on the IET Robotics and Mechatronics Technical Network Committee!
• Aug 2022: Our paper on vision guided tactile poking for transparent object grasping is accepted to IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics (T-Mech), congratulations to Jiaqi and the team! [Paper] [Website]
• Jul 2022: I am now a UKRI EPSRC Peer Review College member.
• Jul 2022: Our A4T paper has been selected as a finalist for the Best Student Paper Award at CASE 2022, vey well done Jiaqi! [Paper] [Website]
• Jul 2022: Our paper on long-tailed instance segmentation is accepted to ECCV 2022, congratulations to Kostas and the team! [Paper] [Website]
• Jun 2022: Our paper on visual-tactile multimodality for following deformable objects is accepted to IROS 2022, congratulations to Leszek and Siyuan! [Paper] [Website]
• Jun 2022: Our paper on hierarchical Affordance detection for Transparent object depth reconstruction and grasping (A4T) is accepted to CASE 2022 and Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L), congratulations to Jiaqi and the team! [Paper] [Website]
• Welcome Jongmin to join our group!
• Apr 2022: One paper accepted to IROS 2022 and Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L), congratulations to Min and the team!
• Apr 2022: Our book “Tactile Sensing, Skill Learning, and Robotic Dexterous Manipulation” is online!
• Mar 2022: One paper accepted to Pattern Recognition, congratulations to Jimin and the team!
• Feb 2022: I am invited to serve as an Associate Editor for IROS 2022.
• Feb 2022: Our Special Issue on “Biomimetic Perception, Cognition, and Control: From Nature to Robots” in Robotics and Automation Magazine closes on 1st Feb, 2022.
• Jan 2022: One paper accepted to ICRA 2022 on masked tactile image generation, congrats to Tudor and Daniel! The dataset and code will be made available soon. Please stay tuned. [Paper] [Website]
• Jan 2022: One paper accepted to Robotics and Autonomous Systems, congrats to Kun and the team!
• Dec 2021 - One paper accepted to IEEE Transactions on Haptics, congrats to Hai-Ning and the team!
• Nov 2021 - Started my new position as Senior Lecturer at King’s College London.

Please visit News for all the news.