Biography

Tengxiang Zhang is an Research Associate Professor at Institute of Computing Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, where he works at the Pervasive Computing Research Center. With a background in both CS and EE, Dr. Zhang’s research lies in the technical side of ubiquitous computing and human computer interaction. His work enables access to the digital world anytime anywhere by developing wearable sensors, IoT tags, and AI-agent-based interfaces. He publishes on top-venues including CHI and IMWUT, and has been honored with two paper awards. He serves on the SIGCHI Sustainability Committee and the CCF HCI and Ubicomp Technical Committees. His work falls into three categories: 1) Wearable and skin sensors, 2) Ultra-low-power IoT tags and localization systems, 3) AI-agent-based interaction interfaces.

Interests

  • Human-computer Interaction
  • Ubiquitous Computing
  • Applied Machine Learning
  • Electromagnetics

Education

  • PhD in Computer Science, 2016-2019

    Tsinghua University, China.

  • Msc in Electrical & Computer Engineering, 2011-2013

    The University of Texas at Austin, USA.

  • Bsc in Electrical Engineering, 2007-2011

    Southeast University, China.

Latest News

  • Oct 30 Our work GestureGPT won Best-paper Award at ISS'24![Paper link]
  • Nov 30 Invited talk "Merging Human, the Digital Space, and the Physical Reality: A Human-centered Approach" at Jinan University at Guangzhou, Guangdong.
  • Nov 24 Invited talk "Merging Digital and Physical Realities: A Human-centered Approach" at ChinaVR'23.
  • Sep 8 Invited talk "Merging Digital and Physical Realities: A Human-centered Approach" at School of Computing and Information Systems, Singapore Management University.
  • Jun 1 Invited talk "Merging Digital and Physical Realities: A Human-centered Approach" at School of Computing, National University of Singapore.
  • April 24 Visiting Prof. Yuxin Liu's Lab at BME, NUS, Singapore for several months. Ping me if you are around!
  • Feb 28 Invited to attend Dagstuhl Perspectives Workshop: A Human-Computer Interaction Perspective to Drive Change towards Sustainable Future. Gave a talk remotely.[Report link]
  • Feb 27 Our paper WebJump: AR-facilitated Distributed Display of Web Pages is accepted by CHI'23 LBW! [Paper link]
  • Feb 16 Our paper ModalDrop: Modality-aware Regularization for Temporal-Spectral Fusion in Human Activity Recognition is accepted by ICASSP'23![Paper link]
  • Feb 3 Serve on the UbiComp/ISWC 2023 organizing committee as a co-chair of the Workshop Track. See you in Cancun!
  • Oct 20 Our paper BLEselect: Gestural IoT Device Selection via Bluetooth Angle of Arrival Estimation from Smart Glasses is accepted by IMWUT! [Paper link]
  • Sep 22 Serve as the Tutorial Chair for HHME2022. [Conference Link, Video Link]
  • Apr 30 Our CHI22 Late-breaking Work BoldMove is online! [Paper link]
  • Mar 20 Start serving on the SIGCHI EC's first Sustainability Committee
  • Jan 17 The journal version of BitID with an open-sourced system implementation and more comprehensive feasibility and usability studies is published on CCF TPCI! [Paper link]
  • Oct 1 I was promoted to Associate Research Scientist!
  • Mar 30 Talk at Microsoft Research (Redmond) on Pervasive Sensing and Interaction Systems and Techniques. [Slides]
  • Jan 21 Guest lecture "Introduction to Sensing in HCI" for course Managing Data and Signal Processing at GIX, University of Washington at Seattle [Slides]
  • Nov 6 Invited talk at OPPO on Thing-computer Interconnection and Future Sensing Systems. [Slides]
  • Oct 18 Attended HHME'20 in Chongqing and became a CCF HCI Technical Committee member.
  • Aug 13 Invited talk at GIX Access Computing Summer Program on Sustainable Ubiquitous Computing and Interaction. [Slides]
  • Feb 28 Our work on backscatter sensors is accepted at SelfSustainableCHI'20 workshop.
  • Jan 16 ThermalRing and MoveVR are both finally accepted at CHI 2020.

Research Overview

Digital content is breaking out of the screens into the physical world with the help of augmented reality and IoT technologies. How do we manage and interact with digital content and physical objects in a natural, consistent, and spontaneous way? I develop IoT sensing systems (e.g., millimeter wave tags) to digitalize the physical world, build stretchable skin sensors and smart wearables (e.g., glasses, rings) to monitor human states and behaviors, and design AI-agent-powered systems to describe and understand the tagged physical world, the digital metaverse, and the humans. Thus, my previous work falls into three categories:
  1. IoT Tags and Localization Systems. I design ultra-low-power backscatter sensing tags that is suitable for pervasive deployment. I use head-mounted radars to calculate their 3D spatial coordinates.
  2. Wearable Sensors. I prototype smart rings and smart glasses to sense both explicit (e.g. gestures) and implicit (e.g. facial expression) interaction behaviors to understand human intent from multi-modal input channels.
  3. AI-agent-based Interaction Systems. I develop novel multi-agent-based system framework that understands interaction inputs in a zero-shot manner, manages context information, and grounds the interaction behaviors to available system actions.

Selected Publications

Click the article name for details

GestureGPT: Zero-shot Interactive Gesture Understanding and Grounding with Large Language Model Agents

arxiv.
Triple-agent based LLM system for gesture understanding and grounding to system actions.
PDF DOI

BLEselect: Gestural IoT Device Selection via Bluetooth Angle of Arrival Estimation from Smart Glasses

IMWUT 2022
BLEselect enables head and hand gestural selection of IoT devices through AoA estimation from smart glasses.
PDF DOI

BoldMove: Enabling IoT Device Control on Ubiquitous Touch Interfaces by Semantic Mapping and Sequential Selection

CHI'22 Late-breaking Work.
Semantic-based IoT device control method that is suitable for resource-constrained input interfaces.
PDF Poster Video DOI

Easily Add Battery-free Wireless Sensors to Everyday Objects: System Implementation and Usability Study

CCF TPCI
The extended journal version of BitID with open-sourced system implementation and usability studies.
PDF Code DOI

New Opportunities for Sustainable Interaction Using Backscatter Sensors

Self-SustainableCHI'20 Workshop. On going effort.
Design considerations of sustainable interaction interfaces with backscatter sensing …
Slides

ThermalRing: Gesture and Tag Inputs Enabled by a Thermal Imaging Smart Ring

CHI'20
ThermalRing uses low-resolution thermal camera for private, robust, and efficient gesture sensing and tag recognition.
PDF Code Slides Video DOI

MoveVR：Enabling Multiform Force Feedback in Virtual Reality using Household Cleaning Robot

CHI'20
MoveVR generates multiform force feedback for an immersive VR experience by leveraging a household cleaning robot.
PDF Video DOI

Facilitating Temporal Synchronous Target Selection through User Behavior Modeling

IMWUT 2019
This paper improves the target selection performance by optimizing blinking pattern sets with Bayesian-based human modeling.
PDF DOI

FlexTouch: Enabling Large-Scale Interaction Sensing Beyond Touchscreens Using Flexible and Conductive Materials

IMWUT 2019
FlexTouch attach conductive strips to touchscreen edges for long-range touch sensing up to 4m and object detection up to 2m.
PDF Video DOI

Tap-to-Pair: Associating Wireless Devices with Synchronous Tapping

IMWUT 2018
Tap-to-Pair pairs two wireless devices spontaneously with no modifications on either device.
PDF Code Video DOI

TouchPower: Interaction-based Power Transfer for Power-as-needed Devices

IMWUT 2017, Discussion Paper
TouchPower transfers on-body power to off-body devices during interaction to reduce maintenance demands.
PDF Video DOI

BitID: Easily Add Battery-free Wireless Sensors to Everyday Objects

SmartCom'17, Best Paper Runner-up
BitID adds sensing ability to everyday objects in a DIY, low-cost, and maintenance-free manner.
PDF Code Video DOI

Three-dimensional Gradient-index Materials and Their Applications in Microwave Lens Antennas

IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation 2013
This paper uses drilled-hole dielectric structures as gradient-index materials.
PDF DOI

Selected Patents

Tengxiang Zhang, Xin Zeng, Yiqiang Chen (2022). An AR Device Facilitated Multi-device Interaction System and Method. CN 202211490160.X (pending).

Tengxiang Zhang, Zitong Lan, Yanrong Li, Yiqiang Chen (2022). A Device Selection System and Method. CN 202211410562.4 (pending).

Tengxiang Zhang, Xin Zeng, Yiqiang Chen (2021). A Semantic-based Device Association Method. CN 202110359565.9.

Tengxiang Zhang, Jiayuan Gao, Yiqiang Chen (2020). A Movement Symmetry Based Smart Prosthesis Control Method and System . CN 202010425034.0.

Tengxiang Zhang, Xin Zeng, Yiqiang Chen (2020). A Smart Ring based Gesture Recognition Method and System. CN 202010413596.3.

Tengxiang Zhang, Jiayuan Gao, Yiqiang Chen (2020). Apparatus and Method for Cognitive Load Analysis Based on Near-infrared Imaging of Subcutaneous Veins . CN 202010459503.0.

Tengxiang Zhang, Yuanchun Shi, Xin Yi, Yuntao Wang, Chun Yu (2018). Pairing method and wireless device for pairing using wireless signals. PCT/CN2018/094468. CN 201810723952.4.

Yuanchun Shi, Yinshuai Zhang, Tengxiang Zhang (2018). Smart Ring and its Wearing Method. CN 201810971684.8.

Experience

 
 
 
 
 

Visiting Scholar

Biomedical Engineering Department, National University of Singapore

Apr 2023 – Sep 2023 Singapore
Design and fabrication of flexible skin sensors and electrochemical sensing circuits.
 
 
 
 
 

Research Associate Professor

Institute of Computing Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences

Oct 2021 – Present Beijing, China
Conduct research on ultra-low-power sensors, AR+Wearable+IoT interactive systems, and semantic-based interaction abstraction theory and applications.
 
 
 
 
 

Research Assistant Professor

Institute of Computing Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences

Jul 2019 – Sep 2021 Beijing, China
Conduct research on ultra-low-power sensors, smart wearables, and interconnection techniques for cross-device resource distribution.
 
 
 
 
 

RF Engineer/Product Manager

Tomoon Technology

Jul 2015 – Jul 2016 Beijing, China

Design RF circuits and antenna for smart watches.

Deploy and manage Bluetooth tracker product for city-scale motorbikes tracking.

 
 
 
 
 

Product Test Engineer

Silicon Labs

May 2013 – Mar 2015 Austin, Texas, USA
Develop test hardware and firmware for wireless MCU ICs.

Services

  • Member of
    • SIGCHI Sustainability Committee
    • CCF HCI Technical Committee
    • CCF Ubicomp Technical Committee
  • Organizer for
    • CHI 2025, Sustainability Chair
    • UbiComp/ISWC 2023, Workshop Track Co-chair
    • HHME 2022, HCI Tutorial Chair
  • Reviewer for
    • CHI'24 Associate Chair for BLending Interaction: Engineering Interactive Systems & Tools subcommittee
    • SIGCHI'20,‘21,‘22,‘22
    • IMWUT/UbiComp'20,‘21,‘22
    • UIST'20
    • MobileHCI'20
    • ISS'20
    • IUI'20
    • TEI'20, ‘21 (WIP PC Member)
    • EICS'19
  • Student Volunteer for
    • ACM UbiComp/ISWC'18, Singapore
    • United Nations 4th World Urban Forum, Nanjing, China

Popular Topics

Accessibility AI Agents Antenna AR Interaction IoT Machine Learning RFID Ring Semantic Sensing Tag Ultra Low-Power Wireless