Jian Hou
I am a PhD student at Imperial College London, working on tactile sensing and machine learning in the Manipulation and Touch Lab under the supervision of Dr. Ad Spiers. My research is fully funded by the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering.
My research aims to make robotic touch accessible to everyone, through low-cost sensor hardware and algorithms that work across any sensor:
- Hardware: low-cost tactile sensors. I design cheap, easy-to-build tactile sensors that still deliver high performance. For example, a cost-efficient and repairable barometric tactile sensor that resolves contact location and orientation far more finely than its taxel pitch (BaroTactile, 2025), and a low-cost, flexible tactile array that measures normal and shear force at every taxel (VecTile, under review).
- Algorithms: sensor-agnostic tactile learning. I develop representations that let one model work across different tactile sensors, so data and models are not locked to one device. This includes a unified representation for non-vision-based sensors (UniTac-NV, 2025), extended to align vision-based and non-vision-based sensors in a shared, depth-aligned latent space (UniTac-VAE, 2026).
Before my PhD, I completed an MSc in Applied Machine Learning at Imperial College London (Distinction) and a BSc in Mechatronics Systems at the University of Melbourne (First Class). I also worked as an Electromechanical Design Intern in Tesla’s R&D department.
I am open to collaborations in both academia and industry. If you are interested in my work, feel free to email me at jian.hou22@imperial.ac.uk.
News
| Aug 2026 | UniTac-VAE accepted to IEEE RA-L. |
|---|---|
| Mar 2026 | Honoured to receive the Amazon PhD Prize for Outstanding Achievements in Robotics. |
| Jun 2025 | UniTac-NV accepted to IROS 2025. |
| Nov 2024 | BaroTactile, my first paper, accepted to IEEE T-RO. |
| Oct 2024 | Started my PhD in Tactile Sensing & Machine Learning at Imperial College London, supervised by Dr. Ad Spiers. |
| Oct 2023 | Graduated from Imperial College London with an MSc in Applied Machine Learning (Distinction). |
| Aug 2022 | Finished my 10-month internship at Tesla as an Electromechanical Design Intern in the R&D department. |
| Dec 2021 | Graduated from the University of Melbourne with a BSc in Mechatronics Systems (First Class). |
Publications
Experience
Education
Supervisor: Dr. Ad Spiers
Distinction
First Class
Awards
Mentoring
Teaching Assistant · ELEC60030 Robotic Manipulation ’25 ’26; ELEC70073 Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition ’25 ’26; Imperial Robotics Summer School ’26 (Best Project Prize); EEE Year 3 Undergraduate Summer Group Project ’26 (Best Project Prize)
Mentoring · EEE MEng final-year projects ’25 ’26; MSc individual research projects ’25 ’26
Academic Service
Reviewer · T-RO ’26; RA-L ’26; EuroHaptics ’26; T-RO ’25