Leading Voices - Prof. Robert Riener
On November 5, 2026, the Editorial Office of Intelligence & Robotics (IR, ISSN: 2770-3541) had the honor of interviewing Prof. Robert Riener, Full Professor of Sensory-Motor Systems at the Department of Health Sciences and Technology, ETH Zurich, Switzerland, and Professor at the University of Zurich. The interview was conducted by Prof. Fengyan Liang from the School of Biomedical Engineering at Hainan University, China,and a Junior Editorial Board Member of IR.
As part of the Leading Voices in Intelligence & Robotics interview series celebrating the fifth anniversary of IR, the conversation explored the impact of CYBATHLON on advancing assistive technologies and improving people's lives, the role of rehabilitation robotics in restoring natural human movement, and the scientific questions that call for closer collaboration among robotics, biomechanics, and neuroscience.
Below are the details of the interview:
Questions:
Q1. Looking back on CYBATHLON's first decade, is there a moment or experience that changed how you think about the role of robotics research in improving people's lives?
Q2. In rehabilitation robotics, how can we tell whether a robot is truly helping a person regain natural movement, rather than simply making a task easier to perform?
Q3. As robotics increasingly intersects with biomechanics and neuroscience, what kind of scientific question do you think requires closer collaboration across these fields, and why?
About Prof. Robert Riener:
Prof. Robert Riener is Full Professor of Sensory-Motor Systems at ETH Zurich, Switzerland, and holds a joint professorship at the University of Zurich. His research interests include rehabilitation robotics, biomechanics, virtual reality, human motion synthesis, and human-machine interaction. He has authored or co-authored more than 500 peer-reviewed journal and conference publications and holds 26 patents. He is the developer of the ARMin arm therapy robot and the initiator of CYBATHLON, an international competition promoting assistive technologies for people with disabilities. His contributions have been recognized with numerous awards, including the 2024 IEEE RAS/EMBS Biorobotics Key Innovator Award. He also received an honorary doctoral degree from the University of Basel in 2018.
About Prof. Fengyan Liang:
Prof. Fengyan Liang is a Professor and Doctoral Supervisor at the School of Biomedical Engineering, Hainan University, China. He received his Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from The Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2021. His research interests include implantable brain-computer interfaces, brain-spine interfaces, neural decoding, and neurorobotics. He has published more than 20 international research papers and serves on the Junior Editorial Boards of several journals, including Exploration, Cyborg and Bionic Systems, and Neural Regeneration Research. He is also a reviewer for leading journals, including Nature Communications and IEEE Transactions on Neural Systems and Rehabilitation Engineering.
Editor: Shine Wei
Production Editor: Xingyue Luo
Respectfully Submitted by the Editorial Office of Intelligence & Robotics
