May 2026

TechTalk – Robotics for Soft Materials

Innovation Wing Two, TechTalk / By

June 11, 2026 (Thursday) 4:00pm-5:00pm
The manufacturing industry faces serious challenges from aging populations, labor shortages, and environmental crises. Robotics enhanced with emerging AI technologies is expected to overcome these challenges by enabling automation of processes that have been difficult to automate with conventional robot technologies. While today’s industrial robots excel at manipulating rigid objects, labor-intensive processes involving soft materials—like garment manufacturing—remain difficult to automate. Soft materials are challenging to manipulate because their shape is unstable and depends on the surface they are in contact with. They are also affected by environmental factors that are difficult to estimate. This presentation briefly overviews robotics for soft materials and explores how AI and machine learning can address garment manufacturing challenges. Preliminary results are introduced, including fabric part manipulation, fixture-free 2D/3D sewing, high-speed edge sensing, bimanual texture alignment, dynamic motion planning, and garment flattening.

TechTalk – Solar PV-X Technologies: New Frontiers Beyond Electricity

Innovation Wing Two, TechTalk / By

May 15, 2026 (Thursday) 11:30am-12:00nn
Photovoltaic (PV) panels are typically less than 20% efficient in delivering electricity from the Sun’s
energy. The efficiency losses are especially pronounced when PV panels are exposed to high
irradiance conditions on warm, sunny days, which lead to higher temperature operation. Of the
total amount of sunlight incident on PV panels, over 70% is lost to the environment as waste heat.
This loss has motivated the development of ‘hybrid’ PV-thermal (PV-T) collectors, which combine
PV cells with a contacting fluid. The fluid recovers waste heat from the cells, thus delivering a
potentially useful thermal output, while simultaneously cooling the cells and increasing their
electrical efficiency. Recently, a new concept that we refer to as multifunctional ‘PV-X’ collector
technology has emerged, in which secondary processes are integrated synergistically with the PV
cells, exploiting the available waste heat to perform additional functions directly within the collector.
In this talk, we will present conventional and advanced PV-T and PV-X collector concepts and
designs, along with their underlying operational principles. We will explore opportunities for further
developing these technologies and examine how new materials can drive improvements from the
component to the system level, while discussing the potential of integrating these technologies into
broader solar-energy systems capable of providing cooling, heating, power, fuels or clean water.

HKAE TechTalk – From Trustworthy Systems to Trustworthy AI

Innovation Wing Two, TechTalk / By

May 19, 2026 (Tuesday) 4:00-5:00pm
Trustworthiness is a critical issue in artificial intelligence (AI), especially for real-world applications. It is impossible to deploy AI in the real world without its being trustworthy. However, the connotation and extension of AI trustworthiness are not entirely clear. There has not been a single definition that is accepted by all researchers. This talk starts from a brief recall of trustworthy systems in the literature and tries to understand any potential differences between classical trustworthy systems and modern-day trustworthy AI. It argues that AI ethics is a crucial part of trustworthy AI, which was not featured in classical trustworthy systems. The talk then presents a short summary of AI ethics and governance. It presents potential synergies among responsible AI (RAI), ESG and SDGs. It points out the challenges of AI governance because of the high complexity and multi-dimensional nature of ethical principles, e.g., transparency. Potential technical solutions will be mentioned, although not in any details. The talk ends with some concluding remarks.