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About

Chien-Liang Fok is a versatile robotics and distributed systems researcher whose work spans humanoid robotics, mobile agent middleware, and cyber-physical systems. He is perhaps best known for his foundational contributions to NASA's Valkyrie humanoid robot — a landmark achievement in bipedal robotics developed in response to the DARPA Robotics Challenge. His papers on Valkyrie's design and actuator control have together garnered over 550 citations, establishing him as a key figure in series elastic actuator technology and decoupled torque control for complex humanoid platforms. His subsequent work on whole-body operational space control and time-delayed actuator systems further deepened the theoretical underpinnings of advanced robot control. Beyond humanoid robotics, Fok made significant early contributions to wireless sensor networks through Agilla, a mobile agent middleware enabling self-adaptive, reprogrammable sensor network applications — work that has accumulated over 220 citations across multiple publications. His research portfolio also encompasses autonomous intersection management, multi-robot patrol coordination, and debugging frameworks for cyber-physical systems, reflecting a broad commitment to intelligent, reliable autonomous systems. Across these diverse domains, Fok's research consistently bridges theoretical rigor with practical implementation, making his work an essential reference for students and engineers building the next generation of autonomous and robotic systems.