Our paper, titled "Plan Optimal Collision-Free Trajectories with Non-Convex Cost Functions Using Graphs of Convex Sets," has been accepted for publication in the IEEE Transactions on Robotics.
This TRO paper develops a new motion planner called the GCSGC planner to compute low-cost and collision-free trajectories for non-convex cost functions. This planner is created by building a graph structure whose vertices and edges are obtained by intersecting a set of collision-free regions with a set of linear-cost regions obtained from a ReLU neural network used to approximate the non-convex cost function. A graph pre-processing technique is then developed to improve the efficiency of the planner and the quality of the computed trajectories.
The first author, Landon Clark, will present this TRO paper at ICRA 2026 held in Vienna, Austria. Huge congrats to Landon on his second TRO paper!
We are excited to announce that a team of researchers led by Dr. Xie, including Dr. Lauren Brzozowski, Dr. Jiang Biao He, and Dr. Hongkai Yu, has been awarded a prestigious grant from the National Science Foundation’s Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) program with a total funding amount of $1,179,584. The funded project, titled "CPS: Medium: An Autonomous Robotic System for Precision and High-Throughput Tomato Phenotyping in Large Scale Greenhouses", aims to automate plant phenotyping through innovative research in robotics, computer vision, and power electronics. The proposed autonomous robotic phenotyping system stands out for its innovative integration of domain knowledge to enhance phenotyping precision, its adaptability to meet the specific needs of greenhouse managers, and its capacity to optimize robot motion using feedback from phenotyping results. This interdisciplinary effort tackles key challenges at the intersection of embodied intelligence for agricultural robots, promising transformative advances in high-throughput, intelligent plant phenotyping. Congratulations to the research team on this significant achievement!
We are thrilled to announce that Dr. Xie has been awarded the prestigious National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award with a total funding amount of $602,698.00. This highly competitive honor recognizes early-career faculty who demonstrate exceptional promise in both research and education. Dr. Xie’s project, titled "CAREER: Safe and Reliable Human-Robot Shared Control for Robotic Telemanipulation in Complex and Extreme Environments", focuses on improving the safety, reliability, and user-friendliness of robotic telemanipulation in complex and extreme environments by integrating manual teleoperation with autonomous control in an intelligent manner. The award will support Dr. Xie’s innovative work over the next five years, helping to advance knowledge in robot shared control and motion planning while also engaging students and the community through K12 outreach and undergraduate research activities.
Our paper, titled "A Learning Based Method for Computing Self-Motion Manifolds of Redundant Robots for Real-Time Fault-Tolerant Motion Planning," has been accepted for publication in the IEEE Transactions on Robotics. This TRO paper introduces a learnable representation of self-motion manifolds and develops a learning-based method to compute self-motion manifolds, enabling real-time fault-tolerant motion planning.
The first author, Landon Clark, will present this TRO paper at IROS 2025 held in Hangzhou, China. Congratulations, Landon!
Dr. Xie serves as the Workshop & Tutorial Chair of IROS 2025, which will be held from October 19 to 25, 2025, in Hangzhou, China. Welcome to submit workshop and tutorial proposals to IROS 2025!
Dr. Xie has been appointed as the associate editor by the IEEE Transactions on Robotics (T-RO) senior editorial board. Her appointment will start on July 1, 2024. She will process submissions on the topics of redundant robots, kinematics, motion and path planning, and failure detection and recovery.
Dr. Xie serves as the Co-Chair for IEEE RAS TC on Algorithms for Planning and Control of Robot Motion starting from February 2024. Look forward to contributing to this TC and serving the TC members!
Dr. Xie serves as the associate editor of the 2024 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), May 13th to 17th, 2024, in Yokohama, Japan.
Dr. Xie serves as the session chair of the Robotics session at the 2023 IEEE/ASME International Conference on Advanced Intelligent Mechatronics (AIM), held on June 27-July 1, 2023, in Seattle, Washington, USA.
Dr. Xie serves as the associate editor of the 2023 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics (SMC).
Our lab receives a one-year $34,998 award from the NASA Kentucky EPSCoR Research Infrastructure Development Grants (RIDG) for the project titled "Developing a Demonstration-Based Motion Planner for Space Telerobots." Dr. Xie serves as the PI of this project.
Thanks for the generous support from NASA KY!
Dr. Xie serves as the associate editor of the 2023 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA).
Joshua A. Ashly passed his master thesis defense on September 21, 2022. Congratulations!
Josh's master thesis focuses on designing a sensor data aggregation system and centralized sensor-driven trajectory planning algorithm for fixed-wing aircraft to optimally assist atmospheric simulators in mapping the local environment in real-time. The proposed application of this work is to be used in the event of a hazardous contaminant leak into the atmosphere as a fleet of sensing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) could provide valuable information for evacuation measures.
After receiving the master degree, Josh will join Blue Origin, Seattle, Washington, as an Embedded System Engineer: Aerospace Applications.
Our lab has been awarded an NSF grant "Autonomous Fault-Tolerant Operation of Redundant Robotic Arms" in collaboration with Prof. Jiangbiao He from UK ECE.
Here is the announcement of this award: https://www.engr.uky.edu/news/2022/09/biyun-xie-receives-nsf-foundationa....
Dr. Xie serves as the session chair of the Signal and Image Processing (III) session at the 2022 IEEE International Conference on Mechatronics and Automation (IEEE ICMA 2021) held in Guilin, Guangxi, China from August 7 to August 9, 2022.
Dr. Xie serves as the associate vice president of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society Technical Activities Board.
Dr. Xie serves as the associate editor of the IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics in 2021-2022.
Dr. Xie serves as the associate editor of The International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) in 2021-2022, which is the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society's flagship conference.
Dr. Xie serves as the associate editor of the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) in 2018-2021, which is the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society's flagship conference.
