LimX Dynamics welcomes Li Zhang as COO and Dr. Jia Pan as Chief Scientist
LimX Dynamics, a leading general-purpose legged robot company, today announced the addition of two pivotal members to its core team: Li Zhang as the Co-founder and COO of LimX Dynamics, and Dr. Jia Pan, a tenured associate professor at the University of Hong Kong, as the Chief Scientist of LimX Dynamics. The incorporation of the two visionaries underscores LimX Dynamics’ unwavering commitment from its inception to the technological and commercial development of general-purpose legged robots, and vigorously advance the frontier Embodied AI.
Zhang, a former COO of an autonomous driving unicorn and a Fortune 500 executive, will steer as LimX Dynamics’ COO. He will primarily focus on business strategy and operation, channel development, marketing and communications, and government relations both domestically and internationally. His expertise is poised to fortify the company’s trajectory towards establishing a commercial ecosystem for general-purpose legged robots, turning its R&D and technological edges into tangible products and services.
Dr. Pan, the newly appointed Chief Scientist, will infuse his world-class expertise in robotics and AI into LimX Dynamics. His key role is to drive forward the research and application of advanced AI in the development of general-purpose legged robots, particularly in the enhancement of complex environment understanding, autonomous task understanding and decomposition, as well as motion planning and optimization. Dr. Pan will drive LimX Dynamics’ global leadership in iteratively upgrading Motion Intelligence to a comprehensive Embodied AI, unleashing the tremendous potential of AI in the physical world, and realizing the future commercial value of general-purpose legged robots, particularly humanoid robots.
Co-founder & COO of LimX Dynamics, Li Zhang
“The pathway to commercializing hard tech follows its own distinct set of principles,” Zhang stated. “I am a firm believer that the foundation of creating business value lies within the technology, the functionalities, and the products that are built on both. During the journey from technological innovation to product development, and further to market adoption, I place high importance on deeply engaging with our customers to comprehend the application scenarios they have, uncover their true needs, and address their core challenges. It is by providing products and solutions that deliver tangible value to our clients that we truly get back to the nature of business. Our clients’ success is synonymous with the success of LimX Dynamics. ”
Zhang further asserted that with LimX Dynamics’ unique and globally recognized technological edge, and together with the new leadership team, the company will bring significant value across various sectors such as industrial inspection, automobile manufacturing, and logistics. “Joining the company marks the beginning of my second entrepreneurial journey. It is my honor to be part of the visionary field of humanoid robotics, a domain brimming with potential and imagination. There is so much yet to be discovered about how humanoids will revolutionize our world. I am truly excited to be a part of this great adventure,” Zhang said.
Chief Scientist of LimX Dynamics, Dr. Jia Pan
“Like the team of LimX Dynamics, I strongly believe that general-purpose legged robots are the future. From mastering the intricacies of low-level motion control to the application of sophisticated high-level AI, the challenges are as formidable as they are thrilling. Humanoid robots stand as the optimal general-purpose system to harness these capabilities, with the more versatile the robot, the greater its capacity for gathering universally applicable data and, hence, creating more substantial value. LimX Dynamics offers first-class hardware platform and perceptive control capabilities, unleashing the tremendous potential for the development and application of AI in legged robots. In my role, I am committed to spearheading research initiatives focusing on advanced AI to assist our R&D team in pinpointing critical challenges, forging solutions, and cultivating new competencies that enhance the versatility and generalizability of LimX Dynamics’ legged robots.”
Founder of LimX Dynamics, Dr. Wei Zhang
“We are very excited to welcome Zhang and Dr. Pan to the team. Their expertise is poised to spearhead LimX Dynamics’ significant breakthroughs in commercialization and advanced AI. General-purpose legged robots are at an important time node where the intersection of technology and commercialization is expanding. I believe it is crucial to do well in both technology advancement and commercialization and to merge them together seamlessly. LimX Dynamics has already taken the first step forward. I believe that general-purpose legged robots are the best carriers for general AI in the physical world. To achieve this goal, the efforts and breakthroughs that LimX Dynamics has been undertaking will bring new insights and value to the field of general robotics and Artificial General Intelligence (AGI).”
More about Li Zhang
Having a profound background in industries such as autonomous driving, automotive, IT, and communications, Li Zhang has excelled in sales, business development and administration. He was one of the key figures in promoting commercialization of autonomous driving in China. Notably, during his more than 5-year long tenure as a senior executive and COO at a leading autonomous driving startup, Zhang’s leadership was instrumental in pioneering viable business model, orchestrating strategic partnerships with both local and international OEMs, actualizing autonomous driving technologies into products such as Robotaxi and Mini Robobus, and driving breakthroughs in regulations for L4 autonomous driving. Prior to that, Zhang had a 19-year distinguished stint at Cisco China as Senior Vice President of Cisco Greater China, CEO’s Chief of Staff, and General Manager of Cisco China’s Innovation Business.
More about Dr. Jia Pan
Dr. Jia Pan is a leading researcher in the fields of robotics and robot learning. Some of his works, such as the development of the Flexible Collision Library (FCL), and his contributions to CPU-based fast trajectory optimization algorithms like TrajOpt and ITOMP, have been widely adopted in the community. He is also among the pioneering researchers to successfully apply deep reinforcement learning and natural language processing to the field of mobile robot collision avoidance and navigation in complex scenarios. His team also masters internationally leading technology such as tactile perception and complex object manipulation, with publications in top journals and conferences such as Science Robotics, IJRR, TRO, CVPR, and ICML. Dr. Pan completed his undergraduate studies in the Department of Automation at Tsinghua University, obtained his Ph.D. from the Department of Computer Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC), and served as a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at the University of California, Berkeley. He currently holds a tenured associate professor position in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Hong Kong.
