Wei-Yun Yau

Dr Yau Wei Yun is the Head of the Robotics and Autonomous Systems (RAS) department and a Principal Scientist II at the Institute for Infocomm Research (I2R), A*STAR. He received his B.Eng. from the National University of Singapore (1992), and M.Eng (1995) and Ph.D. (1999) from the Nanyang Technological University. He has published more than 180 international refereed journal and conference papers and co-authored 20 patents (awarded and pending). He received the TEC Innovator Award 2002, Tan Kah Kee Young Inventors’ Award 2003 (Merit), IES Prestigious Engineering Achievement Awards 2006 and Standards Council Distinguished Award 2007.

Dr Yau and his team have developed several award-winning robotic solutions, including the robotic handling system for Automated Passenger In-vehicle Clearance System (APICS), the MATAR and Xavier robots and spun-off Sensorbot Pte Ltd to commercialise the autonomous shelf reading robot. APICS won the Distinguished ExCEL Innovation Project in April 2018 while MATAR robot won the “Best Drones and Robotics Project” in the International GovInsider Innovation Awards, Sept 2018 and the MTI Firefly Silver Award (Most Innovative Project/Policy), Feb 2021.

Dr Yau also holds a concurrent appointment as Chief Engineer at the Rehabilitation Research Institute of Singapore (RRIS) and the Technology Lead for Navigation and Perception, National Robotics Programme Technology Advisory Group. Prior to his current appointment, Dr Yau was a Programme Manager on interactive TV where he collaborated with 10 companies including Cambridge Silicon Radio, Lantiq, NBC Universal, NTT Corp, Panasonic and Sumitomo Electric Networks and the Infocomm Development Authority (IDA) on the Next Generation National Broadband Network (NGNBN) applications. His team also won the “Best Application” under the Corporate category for the entry “Smart e-Health Monitoring on IPTV” in the ITU-T IPTV Application Challenge 2012.