I am a recent PhD graduate from Mechatronics and Robotic Systems (MaRS) Laboratory, Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Hong Kong, supervised by Dr. Fu Zhang and co-supervised by Prof. James Lam. Previously I received my Bachelor’s Degree in School of Automation Science and Electrical Engineering, Beihang University (formerly known as Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics) in 2020.

My research mainly focuses on LiDAR-based mapping with applications on Robotics. I am deeply interested in exploring elegant representations of the world, which would definitely unlock the boundless possibilities in Robotics.

I will soon join KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm as a Digital Future Postdoctoral Fellow, collaborating with Prof. Patric Jensfelt and Dr. Olov Andersson in the Division of Robotics, Perception and Learning (RPL).

News

• 2024.12.19: Our paper “Autonomous Tail-Sitter Flights in Unknown Environments” is accepted for publication in Transactions on Robotics (TRO). [Preprint][Video]
• 2024.11.27: Our paper “Swarm-LIO2: Decentralized Efficient LiDAR-inertial Odometry for UAV Swarms” is accepted for publication in Transactions on Robotics (TRO). [Preprint][Video][Code]
• 2024.11.03: Our paper “Large-scale Multi-session Point Cloud Map Merging” is accepted for publication in Robotics and Automation Letters(RA-L). [Link][Video]
• 2024.08.29: I have successfully defended my PhD in “Towards Efficient Mapping for Robotics”! [Thesis]
• 2024.06.30: Our paper “ROG-Map: An Efficient Robocentric Occupancy Grid Map for Large-scene and High-resolution LiDAR-based Motion Planning” is accepted for publication in IROS 2024. [Preprint][Video][Code]
• 2024.05.03: It is my great honor to be accepted as a member of the 30-strong cohort of the RSS Pioneer Workshop 2024.
• 2023.12.26: Our paper “MARS-LVIG dataset: A multi-sensor aerial robots SLAM dataset for LiDAR-visual-inertial-GNSS fusion” is accepted for publication in International Journal of Robotics Research (IJRR)[Link].

Featured Publication

• Cai, Y., Kong F., Ren Y., Zhu F., Lin J., & Zhang, F., “Occupancy Grid Mapping without Ray-Casting for High-resolution Sensors” in IEEE Transactions on Robotics (TRO), 2023. [Link] [Github] [Video]
• Xu, W., Cai, Y. (co-first author), He, D., Lin, J., & Zhang, F, “FAST-LIO2: Fast Direct LiDAR-Inertial Odometry” in IEEE Transactions on Robotics (TRO), 2022. [Link] [Github(1.8k stars)] [Video]
• Lu, G., Cai, Y., Chen, N., Kong, F., Ren, Y., & Zhang, F., “Trajectory Generation and Tracking Control for Aggressive Tail-Sitter Flights” in International Journal of Robotics Research (IJRR), 2023. [Link] [Video]
• Lin, J., Yuan, C., Cai, Y., Li, H., Zou, Y., Hong, X., & Zhang, F. (2023). “Immesh: An immediate lidar localization and meshing framework.” in IEEE Transactions on Robotics (TRO), 2023. [Link] [Github] [Video]
• Chen, N., Kong, F., Xu, W., Cai, Y., Li, H., He, D., Qin, Y. & Zhang, F. “A self-rotating, single-actuated UAV with extended sensor field of view for autonomous navigation,” in Science Robotics, 2023. [Link] [Video]
• Cai, Y., Xu, W., & Zhang, F, “ikd-Tree: An Incremental KD Tree for Robotic Applications”. [Link] [Github] [Video]