{"id":4544,"date":"2024-04-01T06:32:46","date_gmt":"2024-04-01T06:32:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dev-alumn-nus.pantheonsite.io\/alumnus\/?p=4544"},"modified":"2025-07-15T16:07:56","modified_gmt":"2025-07-15T08:07:56","slug":"building-better-bots","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alumni.nus.edu.sg\/thealumnus\/2024\/04\/01\/building-better-bots\/","title":{"rendered":"Building Better Bots"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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WHO HE IS<\/strong><\/p>

Dr Ning Ye is a Robotics Machine Learning Engineer at Tesla who has chalked up experience at Google and A*STAR, among others. The machine learning enthusiast completed his PhD at NUS in 2011. He has published nearly 20 papers in top international journals and currently lives in the Bay Area of San Francisco with his wife and two children.<\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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It\u2019s not every day that The AlumNUS meets someone who gets to interact with Elon Musk at work. But that\u2019s the life of Dr Ye<\/a><\/span>, a robotics machine learning engineer at Tesla<\/a><\/span> – a giant of the booming electric vehicle industry helmed by the maverick billionaire. He joined Tesla in mid-2023 after a decade in various tech companies including Google.<\/p>

But if you, too, are hankering for a CV peppered with stints at big companies, Dr Ye has this advice: \u201cFollow your passion and not what\u2019s \u2018hot\u2019 at the moment. Trends can change quickly. It was investment banking 10 years ago, AI today and it can be different tomorrow. Money is important but don’t go just for money: you may not like what you do and might end up throwing in the towel when things get tough.\u201d He adds, \u201cDon\u2019t make joining a big-name company your only goal either, for the same reasons I shared earlier.\u201d<\/p>

PASSION AND PIVOTS<\/strong><\/p>

For Dr Ye, who was born in China and is now a Bay Area resident, his interest in computers and programming goes back to his formative years. \u201cI remember writing a programme in high school to format code in a way that made it look very presentable and neat,\u201d he recalls. Projects like these made him a shoo-in for his undergraduate studies in computer science at Fudan University. He went on to pursue a PhD in the same subject at NUS.<\/p>

This period marked a turning point in his passion, as he was given the liberty \u2014 and presented with the right environment \u2014 to fully satisfy his curiosity. This was nurtured by his supervisor, Dr Terence Sim, now an Associate Professor at the Department of Computer Science and a Vice Dean at the NUS Office of Admissions. Reflecting on Dr Sim\u2019s impact, Dr Ye adds, \u201cHe would guide us and give us direction, while allowing us to decide on our research interests without micromanaging.\u201d<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Dr Ning Ye with Dr Terence Sim, whom he credits for expanding his research focus.<\/figcaption>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/figure>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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Liberated by this approach, Dr Ye changed his focus from coding and programming to computer vision and machine learning (ML). He studied and worked in that field for 10 years. Around 2016, he started to think about how to use ML to revolutionise more fundamental sectors of the society in areas such as manufacturing, agriculture, energy, medicine. He ended up diving deep into Robotics AI.<\/p>

\u201cI wanted to connect the virtual and physical worlds and I saw the potential of ML and robotics to eliminate mundane routines and jobs from our lives,\u201d he explains. He began exploring how ML could make robots more adaptive, dexterous, accessible and collaborative to humans, first in a more industrial setting at Google X and later in a more general setting, a humanoid, at Tesla.<\/p>

TIME AT TESLA<\/strong><\/p>

At Tesla, he taps on ML to improve the robots that will one day provide help and support to people in all possible scenarios, from factories to homes. \u201cThe goal is to create a robot that can do anything a human can do,\u201d he explains.<\/p>

This progress involves a paradigm shift in the way we think about robots. Much of today\u2019s conversations around such humanoids centre on their brain power, but Dr Ye highlights the importance of other human traits that machines can emulate. \u201cThink of how you open a locked door with a key. Your eyes tell you how to put in the key but then you need to feel for how much force to use. Senses like touch are also important to instill in humanoids, so that they can help humans more effectively.\u201d<\/p>

If successful, such applications could go beyond the commercial world and help those in the domestic sphere as well. These would be a godsend for other time-crunched individuals, says Dr Ye, who is a father of two. \u201cI would love for a robot to one day be able to fold my T-shirts and do my laundry,\u201d he quips.<\/p>

THE NEXT UPDATE<\/strong><\/p>

Given that he\u2019s immersed in the world of robots, we ask Dr Ye to cast his gaze to the future, to tell us how life might look in 2034.<\/p>

He reflects, \u201cHopefully, we\u2019ll see more robots deployed in supermarkets, restaurants and factories,\u201d he says. \u201cThe future in my mind is somehow very close to what a kids cartoon, like Tayo the Little Bus, would describe: Friendly and intelligent machines, including cars, robots and others, interact with humans in a natural, safe and effective way to significantly \u2013 100 times or more – improve the productivity of the society as well as the wellbeing of everyone. They would ideally be powered by the learning models that have made tools like ChatGPT so useful, so that they can understand our intention and be dexterous enough to perform the tasks we want them to. This will probably become a reality, although the exact timeline is difficult to predict.\u201d<\/p>

Naturally, the conversation turns to another widely-discussed theme when it comes to robots, ML and artificial intelligence: safety and ethics. \u201cI think it\u2019s good that these discussions are so prominent, because it\u2019s proof that we are paying attention to these issues and they are not blind spots,\u201d he notes. \u201cI think risks often arise when we do not pay attention to certain matters.\u201d He cites COVID-19 as an example of this. Those years laid bare society\u2019s vulnerabilities to pandemics, which some had ignored altogether. \u201cBut now that we\u2019ve lived through it, people are a lot better prepared. I think we will see a similar trajectory for robots.\u201d<\/p>

Read more: Get advice from Dr Ning Ye on how to thrive in a tech-driven world.<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Photos by Ning Ye<\/h6>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How Dr Ning Ye (Computing \u201911) is tapping on machine learning to make robots more effective partners.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4545,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"elementor_theme","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4544","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-leadership"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alumni.nus.edu.sg\/thealumnus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4544","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alumni.nus.edu.sg\/thealumnus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alumni.nus.edu.sg\/thealumnus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alumni.nus.edu.sg\/thealumnus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alumni.nus.edu.sg\/thealumnus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4544"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/alumni.nus.edu.sg\/thealumnus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4544\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5076,"href":"https:\/\/alumni.nus.edu.sg\/thealumnus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4544\/revisions\/5076"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alumni.nus.edu.sg\/thealumnus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4545"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alumni.nus.edu.sg\/thealumnus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alumni.nus.edu.sg\/thealumnus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4544"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alumni.nus.edu.sg\/thealumnus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}