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About

Dr. Tele Tan is a pioneering researcher in social robotics and rehabilitation engineering, whose work bridges the gap between human emotion and machine interaction. His primary research areas include affective computing, robotic facial expression systems, and assistive rehabilitation technologies. Dr. Tan’s most influential contribution is his development of a sociable robot face capable of realistic emotional expression, as detailed in his 2016 paper (18 citations), where he modeled and verified facial expression display mechanisms to enable robots to conform to human emotion display rules. He further advanced this work by creating a closed-loop Petri Net model (4 citations) that allows robotic faces to exhibit, maintain, and withdraw six basic affective states in a human-like manner. In rehabilitation, Dr. Tan has made notable strides with a compact robotic device for upper-limb reaching rehabilitation (2 citations) and innovative robotic assessments of proprioception (3 citations), examining age-related impacts on sensorimotor function. His interdisciplinary approach—combining mechanical design, control systems, and cognitive science—has positioned him as a key figure in developing robots that can interact naturally with humans, particularly in healthcare and assistive contexts.