Guanrui Li

Guanrui Li is an Assistant Professor at Worcester Polytechnic Institute's Robotics Engineering Department and the director of the Aerial-robot Control and Perception Lab (ACP Lab). He holds a Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from NYU (2024), an M.S. in Robotics from the University of Pennsylvania (2018), and a B.E. in Theoretical and Applied Mechanics from Sun Yat-sen University (2016). His research focuses on aerial robotics, including control methodologies for collaborative transportation, human-robot interaction, and perception-aware systems. Key contributions include Hybrid Perception-Aware MPC frameworks, cooperative manipulation algorithms, and simulation tools like RotorTM.

Education:

• Ph.D., Electrical and Computer Engineering, NYU (2024)
• M.S., Robotics, University of Pennsylvania (2018)
• B.E., Theoretical and Applied Mechanics, Sun Yat-sen University (2016)

Research Interests: Control and perception of aerial robots, human-robot collaboration, cooperative manipulation, and autonomous systems. Notable work addresses challenges in payload transportation, sensor fusion, and safety-critical navigation.

Awards:

• NSF CPS Rising Stars (2023)
• Outstanding Deployed System Paper Finalist (IEEE ICRA 2022)
• NYU Dante Youla Award (2022)
• NYU Outstanding Dissertation Award (2024)

Lab & Team: ACP Lab focuses on advancing aerial robotics through interdisciplinary research. Current projects include mixed reality interfaces for human-robot interaction and fault-tolerant control systems. Recent collaborations include workshops on Rust for Robotics (ICRA 2025) and embodied-AI for aerial systems (ICUAS 2025).