On 19 January 2026, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) and Beijing Simple AI Technology Co., Ltd. (Simple AI) officially launched their strategic partnership with a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) signing ceremony at PolyU’s Chiang Chen Studio Theatre (AG204), Hong Kong. Representatives from both institutions exchanged the agreement and discussed future collaboration in embodied intelligent robotics. The partnership reflects PolyU’s commitment to industry-academia collaboration and to AI-driven technologies for real-world applications.
PolyU – Simple AI Strategic Collaboration Launch & MOU Exchange Ceremony.
The ceremony was hosted by Prof. Weisong Wen from the Trustworthy AI and Autonomous Systems Laboratory (TASLAB). Attendees from PolyU included Ir Prof. H.C. Man, Dean of the Faculty of Engineering; Prof. Crystal Shi from the School of Hotel and Tourism Management; and Dr. Runqiu Yang from TASLAB. Simple AI was represented by Founder and CEO Dr. Xiaofei Li, Vice President Yutang Tang and Marketing Director Hui Wang.
Areas of collaboration
The MOU sets out a framework for joint work in several key areas of embodied intelligent robotics:
- Joint Research and Development: design and optimization of robot “brains” using AI-driven control systems, including End-to-End Learning, Vision-Language-Navigation (VLN) and Vision-Language-Action (VLA) models, for robust perception, real-time reasoning and precise execution in dynamic environments.
- Closed-Loop Systems Development: building systems that integrate behavioral AI models with real-world data from simulated and actual scenarios, addressing challenges such as data scarcity in unstructured settings like hotels, nursing homes and homes.
- Integration of TASLAB Expertise: using TASLAB’s high-precision positioning algorithms and multi-sensor fusion to ensure safety in autonomous operations, providing fail-safe checks on AI-driven perception in complex indoor environments.
- Phased Proof-of-Concept Pilots and Industrialization: running pilots in hotel services (drawing on Simple AI’s partnerships with major hotel groups and PolyU’s leadership in Hospitality & Tourism Management), elderly care and family environments, improving the robots’ generalization, long-horizon task planning, emotional intelligence, adaptive learning and self-evolutionary capabilities.
These initiatives aim to advance assistive robotics and to provide solutions for societal needs in hospitality, elderly care and beyond.
Discussion on future collaboration and a group photo after the ceremony.