Youcan Yan
I am currently a postdoc at CNRS (LIRMM IDH team), working with Prof. Abderrahmane Kheddar. I received my Ph.D. at City University of Hong Kong, where my advisors were Prof. Jia Pan and Prof. Yajing Shen. Before coming to CityU, I received my B.S. in North China Electric Power University in 2016 and studied at Xi’an Jiaotong University for two years, where my advisor was Prof. Yugang Duan.
My research interests lie in developing soft tactile sensors and relevant algorithms to help robots better perceive and interact with the physical world.
Email: youcan.yan@lirmm.fr | Google Scholar | LinkedIn
News
2025-12-12: Our project “Dexterous Robotic Manipulation with Advanced Tactile Sensing” has been awarded an NVIDIA Academic Grant.
2025-10-27: I gave a talk at School of Mechanical Engineering in Zhejiang University.
2025-10-24: I am co-organizing two workshops at IROS 2025 (Tactile Sensing Toward Robot Dexterity and Intelligence + Contact and Impact-Aware Manipulation).
2025-07-01: I was ranked 1st in the CNRS National Competition and admitted as a Research Scientist (CRCN) in Section 07 (now Section 03).
2025-06-09: I serve as a Topic Coordinator for “Computational Multimodal Sensing and Perception for Robotic Systems,” a research topic featured in Frontiers in Robotics and AI.
2025-05-26: I gave a talk at the Institute for Regenerative Medicine and Biotherapy.
2025-04-29: I was ranked 1st in the Inria National Competition for both the Research Scientist position (CRCN) and the Inria Starting Faculty Position (ISFP) at Lille Center.
2025-04-11: I gave a talk at Inria Defrost Team.
2025-04-10: I serve as an Associate Editor for the 2025 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2025).
2024-11-19: Our recent work on self-decoupled robotic skin has been published in Nature Machine Intelligence and is highlighted in a News & Views article (also featured by CNRS Informatics).
2024-09-26: I gave a talk at Tsinghua Embodied AI Lab.
2024-07-19: I am co-organizing the RSS Workshop 2024 (Noosphere: Tactile Sensing for General Purpose Robot Learning).
2024-07-14: I am co-organizing the RSS Pioneers Workshop 2024.
2023-08-23: I will serve as an Associate Editor for the 2023 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Biomimetics (ROBIO 2023).
2023-04-28: I was selected as an RSS Pioneer 2023.
2022-10-14: I have been given the Outstanding Research Thesis Award (8 awardees at CityU in 2022).
2022-06-07: I have successfully defended my PhD thesis.
2021-12-28: Our research project on soft magnetic skin has been showcased in the inaugural exhibition of HKU Innovation Wing Two.
2021-09-01: I have been awarded the Institutional Research Tuition Scholarship for 2021/9- 2022/8 at CityU.
2021-08-16: I have been given the Outstanding Academic Performance Award for 2020/9 – 2021/8 at CityU.
2021-03-10: Our recent work on soft robotic skin is published in Science Robotics, and featured by WIRED Magazine, CityU research stories, and other news outlets.
Publications
2024 Nature Machine Intelligence “A soft skin with self-decoupled three-axis force-sensing taxels”, Youcan Yan*, Ahmed Zermane, Jia Pan, Abderrahmane Kheddar*. (link)(SharedIt) (NMI News & Views)
2022 RA-L+ICRA “Tactile Super-resolution Model for Soft Magnetic Skin”, Youcan Yan, Yajing Shen, Chaoyang Song, Jia Pan*. (link)(video)
2022 Advanced Intelligent Systems “Surface Texture Recognition by Deep Learning‐Enhanced Tactile Sensing”, Youcan Yan, Zhe Hu, Yajing Shen*, Jia Pan*. (link) (video)
2021 Science Robotics “Soft Magnetic Skin for Super-resolution Tactile Sensing with Force Self-decoupling”, Youcan Yan, Zhe Hu, Zhengbao Yang, Wenzhen Yuan, Chaoyang Song, Jia Pan*, Yajing Shen*. (link) (video) (ESI Highly Cited Paper, featured by WIRED Magazine and other news outlets)
2021 RA-L+ICRA “Fast Localization and Segmentation of Tissue Abnormalities by Autonomous Robotic Palpation”, Youcan Yan, Jia Pan*. (link) (video)
2018 ICMME “A Finite Element Method of Modelling and Designing of an ACCC Conductor”, Youcan Yan, Yugang Duan *. (link)
Services
Co-organizer of two IROS 2025 workshops (Tactile Sensing + Contact-Aware Manipulation)
Co-organizer of RSS Pioneers Workshop 2024
Co-organizer of RSS 2024 Workshop (Noosphere: Tactile Sensing for General Purpose Robot Learning)
Mentor of Inclusion@RSS 2024
Associate Editor of ROBIO 2023, IROS 2025
Journal Reviewer: Nature Communications, T-RO, TMECH, ToH, TIM, RAM, RA-L, IJCAS, etc.
Conference Reviewer: RSS, ICRA, IROS, RoboSoft, AIM