On January 9, 2026, Professor Yau Shing-tung, a member of the Strategic Committee of the Shenzhen Loop Area Institute, a Fields Medal laureate, and a Chair Professor at Tsinghua University, visited the Shenzhen Loop Area Institute.

Professor Yau's visit served not only to gain a deeper understanding of the institute's progress in his capacity as a Strategic Committee member but also to engage in dialogues with multiple research teams. He personally participated in the interactive the Question of the Question activity and offered high praise and directional guidance for the younger generation's exploratory practices in venturing into uncharted technological territories.

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Pausing in thought before the Institute's interactive installation The Question of the Question, Professor Yau picked up a pen and wrote down a profound scientific question. This act symbolized the highest regard for the fundamental driving force of scientific research—posing and challenging critical, foundational questions. True scientific breakthroughs begin with "good questions." With this, Professor Yau encouraged the faculty and students of the Shenzhen Loop Area Institute to dare to aim at fundamental problems in basic science and interdisciplinary fields, fostering original discoveries in the process of tackling the complex challenges of the real world.

Professor Yau Shing-tung writes down a question in his own hand

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As a member of the Institute's Strategic Committee, Professor Yau listened in detail to reports on the institute's phased achievements in exploring interdisciplinary education paradigms, cultivating compound innovative talents, and tackling cutting-edge technology projects. Subsequently, he visited student-led advanced laboratories, engaged in thematic discussions with core team members, and experienced firsthand the innovation chain from basic research to technological breakthroughs.

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A New Paradigm in Embodied Intelligence: Coffee Robot Team Demonstrates the Future of General Manipulation

The team of Professor Weishi Zheng and Professor Guiliang Liu from the Center for Embodied Intelligence and Computer Vision gave a live demonstration to Professor Yau Shing-tung of their self-developed Embodied Intelligent Humanoid Robot Coffee Service System. Using a humanoid platform, the device seamlessly completed the full task flow from environmental perception and semantic understanding to autonomous planning and execution of coffee making. The team explained its core tripartite technical architecture integrating a physics engine, large language models, and multimodal perception, as well as the innovative approach for efficient training and agile deployment through their engine-driven Sim2Real VLA framework.

During the exchange with the student team, Professor Yau observed a live demonstration of the embodied intelligent humanoid robot making coffee and sampled the coffee it prepared. He expressed keen interest in the team's progress regarding the interaction between the intelligent system and the real-world environment.

Professor Yau Shing-tung and his delegation personally experience the humanoid robot making coffee

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Explorers of Extreme Spaces: Continuum Robot Breaks Boundaries in Industry and Medicine

To address the challenges of inspection and operation within extremely confined spaces, such as aero-engine interiors and industrial pipelines, the team of Professor Hongliang Ren from the Center for Embodied Intelligence and Computer Vision presented their research on an Embodied Perception and Interactive Intelligence System for Continuum Robots. The research aims to endow robots with exceptional compliance and deformation capability. This allows them to actively adapt to narrow, winding, and complex environments. It enables precise navigation and manipulation.

Professor Yau listened to the team's report on achieving high-dimensional path planning, environmental interaction modeling, and autonomous control strategies under multiple constraints. He also watched a demonstration of the robot operating in a simulated extreme environment.

Professor Yau Shing-tung and his delegation in deep discussion with Professor Ren Hongliang's team

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The Intelligent Eye in the Operating Room: Multimodal Fusion Pushes the Limits of Surgical Robot Precision

Professor Ren Hongliang's team focused on a core challenge for intelligent surgical robots. They introduced their innovative achievement: the VL-SurgPT multimodal surgical point tracking dataset and the TG-SurgPT text-guided tracking method. Confronting harsh visual conditions during surgery, such as smoke, specular reflections, and tissue deformation, the team pioneered the deep integration of visual tracking points with textual semantic descriptions. They constructed a large-scale dataset and proposed a novel method. This significantly enhances the robustness of the tracking system in complex scenarios.

Professor Yau listened attentively to the team's report. He exchanged views with faculty and students on the progress of the research work.

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At the conclusion of the exchange, Professor Yau expressed his appreciation for the dynamic vitality and early achievements demonstrated by the Shenzhen Loop Area Institute. He commended its success in gathering outstanding young talent, focusing on major scientific frontiers, and conducting high-level interdisciplinary research. The innovative ecosystem fostered by the Institute, which emphasizes starting with genuine problems and promoting multidisciplinary impact, is crucial for cultivating top scientists and engineers capable of defining and leading future change.

Professor Yau's visit and in-depth engagement provided forward-thinking inspiration and significant intellectual encouragement for the faculty and students of the Shenzhen Loop Area Institute. Moving forward, the Institute will continue to deepen industry-academia-research collaboration and interdisciplinary innovation. It strives to establish itself as a globally significant source of original innovation and a highland for nurturing leading talent in the field of artificial intelligence.