Boyuan Chen
DIRECTOR OF THE GENERAL ROBOTICS LAB AT DUKE UNIVERSITY
BOYUAN CHEN DOESN’T JUST BUILD ROBOTS—he envisions them as a new species. “I’ve been really fascinated by how things are evolving,” said Chen, director of the General Robotics Lab at Duke University. “When I look at robots, I think they’re almost like another species that are evolving both their embodiment form of structures and also how they think and how they behave.”
His lab takes a full-stack approach to robotics, constructing not only the mechanical structures—the body—but also developing the algorithms that form the brain. “We are trying to lay out a foundation, how we’re going to evolve on this new species,” Chen explained. For him, robots are still in their infancy in terms of development.
Chen’s journey toward this work wasn’t linear. Growing up in Liaoning province in northeastern China, he filled his time with art, calligraphy, and music. “I played the piano for more than 20 years, and this process to me is nothing too different than building robots,” he said. “You’re also just trying to understand the fundamental principles and you use this knowledge to compose and make novel forms of robots or a novel form of music.”
“If I really have to pick one essential skill for future engineers to be successful, I would say it’s a full stack mindset. If you know how to design better mechanical structures or the body of the robots, you end up with more adequate solutions from the mind, which is the algorithm side of the robots.”
—Boyuan Chen
Chen’s favorite depiction of the future is a scene in The Matrix where a skill is loaded directly into a human. “I think we’re at a turning point where we can actually load a skill into a robot brain and make it work very well, just like that movie,” he said.
A pivotal moment in his career occurred when he was selected to study at the University of Manchester. The program exposed him to concepts that were not quite as big in China at the time.
“That was sort of the moment that really changed a lot of my views of how robotics should work,” he recalled. Immersed in control theory and autonomy, he saw firsthand how the rise of AI was beginning to intersect with the physical world.
Today, Chen believes the most exciting—and underappreciated—aspect of robotics is embodiment. “Embodiment sometimes can be a form of constraints about what we can and cannot do. But it also enables us to learn in a certain way,” he said. This awareness defines his lab’s work, focusing not just on algorithms but how a robot’s physical form influences learning and interaction.
Despite concerns over AI, Chen remains optimistic about the future of human-robot collaboration. “Robots are just like our partners and they should be our collaborators,” he said. “Combining together, we can achieve something—a form of superintelligence that is beyond what human or machine could achieve alone.”
Watch our video profile of Bouyan Chen.
© 2025 The American Society of Mechanical Engineers. All rights reserved.