Zhihao Liu
Postdoc
Details
Researcher
About me
Zhihao Christopher Liu is a researcher and emerging thought leader in Physical AI, Agentic Robotics, World Models, and Digital Twins, currently serving as a Postdoctoral Researcher atKTH Royal Institute of Technology and a Postdoctoral Fellow at XPRES. His work focuses on building AI-native robotic systems that can perceive, reason, plan, learn, and act in complex physical environments.
At the intersection of embodied AI, robot learning, human–robot collaboration, digital twins, multimodal perception, and industrial intelligence, Zhihao develops technologies that connect digital intelligence with real-world robotic execution. His research vision is to enable the next generation of physical AI systems where robots, AI agents, world models, and digital twins work together to transform manufacturing, construction, automation, and human-centered industrial operations.
Zhihao received his Ph.D. in Information Technology and Communication Engineering from Wuhan University of Technology in 2023. During his doctoral training, he was a guest doctoral student at KTH Royal Institute of Technology from 2019 to 2021. He also finished his master’s and bachelor’s programs from WUT in 2018 and 2016, respectively.
He has published extensively across robot learning, smart robotic manufacturing, human–robot collaboration, digital twin systems, industrial AI, IIoT, and intelligent manufacturing systems. His representative works cover topics such as robot learning for smart manufacturing, human–robot collaborative disassembly, digital twin-enabled manufacturing systems, dynamic risk assessment for industrial HRC, multimodal human action understanding, and robot digital twin systems.
Beyond his own research, Zhihao is an active contributor to the global AI, robotics, and manufacturing research communities. He has served as an invited reviewer for leading journals including Nature Communications, Artificial Intelligence, Artificial Intelligence Review, IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems, IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics, IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering, IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics: Systems, Advanced Engineering Informatics, Robotics and Computer-Integrated Manufacturing, International Journal of Production Research, Expert Systems with Applications, Information Fusion, Robotics and Autonomous Systems, Journal of Manufacturing Systems, and Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence, among many others.
He has also reviewed for major international conferences in robotics and manufacturing, including RSS, IROS, ICRA, CIRP CMS, CIRP CATS, CIRP LCE, and SME NAMRC. His broad peer-review service reflects his cross-disciplinary expertise across AI, robotics, automation, digital manufacturing, and industrial intelligence.
Zhihao is also experienced in research supervision and talent development. He has supervised or co-supervised Ph.D., master’s, and undergraduate students at KTH Royal Institute of Technologyand Wuhan University of Technology, covering projects in robotics, human–robot collaboration, robot learning, perception, digital twins, and intelligent manufacturing.
He is the recipient of the Outstanding Doctoral Thesis Award and the National Scholarship, the highest scholarship honor for Ph.D. students in China. He is an IEEE Member and ACM Member, and serves as a member of the ACM Europe Technology Policy Committee, IEEE Technical Committee on Robot Learning, IEEE Technical Committee on Digital Manufacturing and Human-Centered Automation, and IEEE Technical Committee on Human-Robot Interaction & Coordination. He is also a CIRP STC-O CMS Editorial Board Member for 2026–2028 and Guest Editor for theFuture Internet special issue on Industrial Internet of Things: Trends and Technologies.
Zhihao’s long-term mission is to advance Physical AI for real-world industry: creating intelligent robotic systems that combine foundation models, agentic AI, world models, digital twins, and human-compatible autonomy to bring AI from the digital space into the physical world.
Projects at KTH:
2. Digital Futures: Towards Safe Smart Construction: Algorithms, Digital Twins and Infrastructures
3. SJTU-KTH Collaborative Research and Development Seed Grants:Foundation Models and Large Language Models Driven Proactive Human-Robot Collaboration towards the Futuristic Industry 5.0 Assembly Lines
For more information, please visit my academic homepage: www.zhihaoliu.com