Rate My Professor Takayuki Matsuno

Takayuki Matsuno is a Professor in the School of Engineering within the Faculty of Environmental, Life, Natural Science and Technology at Okayama University. He received his Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from Nagoya University in 1998, a Master’s degree from the Graduate School of Engineering in 2000, and a Doctor of Engineering from Nagoya University’s Graduate School of Engineering, Microsystem Engineering Doctoral Program in 2005. His academic career commenced as an Assistant Professor at Nagoya University from October 2004 to March 2006. He then served as Assistant Professor at Toyama Prefectural University from April 2006 to March 2008 and Lecturer there from April 2008 to September 2011. Joining Okayama University in October 2011 as a Lecturer in the Department of Natural Science and Technology, he progressed to Associate Professor from April 2017 to March 2022, Professor in the Graduate School of Natural Science and Technology from April 2022 to March 2023, and Professor in the Faculty of Environmental, Life, Natural Science and Technology from April 2023 to present.

Professor Matsuno’s research centers on robotics and intelligent mechanical systems, encompassing manipulation of deformable linear objects such as ropes and wires using topological models and knot invariants, development of CT-guided needle puncture robots like Zerobot for interventional radiology to minimize physician radiation exposure, autonomous mobile robot navigation in unknown rough terrains via Growing Neural Gas for 3D point cloud perception, traversability clustering, and path planning, as well as control of underactuated systems and neural network-based shape matching. His notable achievements include the SICE Paper Award and SICE RT Middleware Award in 2024, Japan Computer Surgery Society Paper Award (Excellent Case Award) in 2021, SICE SI Department Contribution Award in 2020 for chairing the SI2019 program committee, and the 15th Murakawa-Namba Technology Encouragement Award in 2020 for Zerobot. Key publications feature “Sliding-mode velocity control of mobile-wheeled inverted-pendulum systems” (IEEE Transactions on Robotics, 2010), “Modeling and velocity control for a novel narrow vehicle based on mobile wheeled inverted pendulum” (IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology, 2012), “Robotically driven CT-guided needle insertion: preliminary results in phantom and animal experiments” (Radiology, 2017), and “PointGNG: a deep learning architecture for 3D point cloud recognition using growing neural gas” (Artificial Life and Robotics, 2026). He edited the proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Intelligent Robotics and Applications in 2025.