Prof Xie’s research is in the areas of advanced mechatronics and robotics in medicine and high value industries.

His principal research interest is in the development of new robotic technologies for a wide range of applications ranging from rehabilitation, medical surgery, and personal assistance to industrial applications. His research approach is to use a combination of mathematical modelling techniques, mechatronic methods, and experimental measurements to better understand human systems, design smart and robust robotic devices and automatically control them interacting with human. More specifically, his main research interests include:

• Robotics fundamentals 
  Parallel robotic mechanisms, bio-inspired and energy-efficient robotic mechanisms
  Reconfigurable robotic mechanisms and wearable robotics
• Assistive robotics, Exoskeletons and AI 
  Exoskeletons/robots for ankle joint rehabilitation, wrist and finger exoskeleton, gait exoskeleton, wrist joint exoskeleton, and upper limb exoskeleton
  Interactive computer games, disability assessment techniques.
  Movement sequence optimisation and evaluation, measurement of sports performance and robot assisted training
• Rehabilitation and Assistive Robotics for stroke patients and elderly care
  Exoskeletons/robots for stroke rehabilitation, low cost orthotics for stroke rehabilitation in developing countries
  Interactive robots for elderly people
  Robotics for patients with CP and SPI

• Robots for orthopedic surgery
  Long bone fracture reduction, fracture biomechanics, robot assisted surgery, 3D bone reconstruction and virtual surgery
• Physical human-robot interaction
  Advanced control strategies, modelling of human joint mechanics together with robots, effective human-robot interaction strategies, industrial robots
• Soft robotics
  Wearable sensors and actuators, Dielectric elastomer sensors and actuators, energy harvesters, penumatic artificial muscles for exoskeletons
• Neuromuscular interfaces and Brain-computer interfaces
  EMG-based neuromuscular interface for elbow joint, human jaw and knee joint, understand human movements
  SSVEP based BCI and hybrid BCI, BCI for robot/exoskeleton control, monitoring brain measurements of stroke, SCI and CP patients
• Robots for agricultural and underwater applications
  Food sorting machines, orchard robots, forestry robots, underwater robot for hull cleaning