Professor XIONG Rong receives IFR “Women Shaping the Future of Robotics 2026” award

Professor XIONG Rong, a Qiushi Distinguished Professor at Zhejiang University and Chief Scientist of the Zhejiang Humanoid Robot Innovation Center, has received the International Federation of Robotics (IFR) “Women Shaping the Future of Robotics 2026” Award. Recognizing only 11 outstanding women worldwide each year, the award is among the most prestigious honors for women in robotics. Professor XIONG is the only recipient from China this year.

Professor XIONG has spent 28 years advancing robotics, growing from a young researcher in what was once seen as a niche field into an internationally recognized scientist. In the early 2000s, when robotics resources were still finite, she immersed herself in the field through extensive self-study and hands-on exploration with her students. After a year of continuous design, evaluation, and testing, her team developed Zhejiang University’s first-generation FIRA robot soccer team, laying the foundation for future breakthroughs.

In the years that followed, Professor XIONG led her students to achieve more than ten world championship and runner-up titles in international robot soccer competitions. In 2011, after more than four years of dedicated research, her team successfully developed “Wu” and “Kong,” humanoid robots capable of dynamic table tennis rallies. With 30 joints and seven degrees of freedom in each arm, they attracted widespread international attention and marked a major milestone in humanoid robotics.

For Professor XIONG, robotics must go beyond the laboratory to serve real-world needs. Guided by this belief, she has actively promoted the industrial application of robotics technologies. In 2016, she co-founded IPLUSMOBOT, which has grown into one of China’s leading providers of natural-navigation autonomous mobile robot systems for industrial logistics.

At the end of 2023, she once again took the lead in response to the rapid rise of embodied intelligence, founding the Zhejiang Humanoid Robot Innovation Center in Ningbo. In just two years, the team launched the “Navigator” series of humanoid robots and advanced their application in scenarios such as garment manufacturing, automobile assembly, and power grid inspection. The center also helped achieve a landmark step for China’s robotics industry by delivering humanoid quality-inspection robots for refrigerator production lines to BEKO, a leading Turkish home appliance manufacturer.

At the heart of these achievements is the team’s distinctive strength in highly generalizable precision operation, enabling robots to perform tasks with 0.03-millimeter accuracy while adapting efficiently to complex real-world environments. As Professor XIONG has said, “Technology develops like a snowball rolling forward. You must start pushing the next one before the last one has melted.”

Beyond her accomplishments in research and innovation, Professor XIONG has made a lasting impact as an educator and mentor. Since 2001, she has helped build robotics education platforms, competitions, and course systems at Zhejiang University, introducing hundreds of students each year to the field of robotics. Many of her former students have gone on to become influential figures in academia and industry, including WANG Yue, a faculty member at the College of Control Science and Engineering; ZHU Qiuguo, founder of DEEP Robotics; CHEN Shouxian, General Manager of IPLUSMOBOT; and WANG Shiquan, founder of Flexiv. Their achievements stand as a testament to her enduring legacy of innovation, dedication, and leadership.

Translator: FANG Fumin
Editor: HAN Xiao