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About

Hongji Yang is a leading researcher at the intersection of conversational AI and industrial robotics, pioneering the development of natural, humanised interfaces for manufacturing environments. Her work addresses a critical gap: while task-oriented dialogue systems have flourished in consumer domains, their application to real-world industrial robots has been severely limited. Yang’s major contributions include the creation of ToD4IR, a humanised task-oriented dialogue system that enables intuitive, speech-based control of industrial robots, and the development of Max, a speech-enabled virtual assistant designed for efficient human–robot interaction on the shop floor. To support these advances, she also constructed the IRWoZ dataset—the first Wizard-of-Oz dialoguing corpus specifically for industrial robots, providing a foundational resource for training conversational AI in manufacturing contexts. With her most-cited papers accumulating over 70 citations, Yang’s work is shaping a future where factory workers can interact with complex machinery as naturally as they would with a human colleague. Her research not only pushes the boundaries of human–robot interaction but also promises to make industrial automation more accessible, flexible, and safe.