WASP Researcher of the Month - Yufei Zhu

Describe your research in one sentence.

I study how robots can learn the typical movement patterns of a place, such as where people walk, which side they keep to and how these change over time, so they can anticipate people's movements and navigate safely and efficiently among them.

What do you hope your research will lead to?

Robots are steadily becoming part of our everyday lives, but most of them still treat people as obstacles to avoid. I want robots to understand the movement conventions of a place, just as we instinctively know where and how people tend to walk in a busy station. My hope is that this leads to robots that move naturally and predictably, so that people around them can easily understand what they are doing. Robots that understand us, and that we can understand in return, are key to sharing our workplaces and public spaces with them.

What is the most unexpected result you've had so far?

Before every experiment, we make a guess about what will happen, and the most interesting moments are when reality disagrees. One example came when we compared our map-based methods for predicting human motion with deep learning-based predictors. We found that on smaller and less balanced datasets, which are very common in real-world robotics, the simpler map-based methods actually performed better. This finding gave us a much clearer picture of when each approach should be used, and inspired us to explore how the two can complement each other.

If you could collaborate with anyone in the world, who would it be and why?

I would love to work with Swedish wildlife researchers, for example Göran Ericsson, professor of wildlife ecology at SLU. I follow SVT's "Den stora älgvandringen", the live broadcast of the moose migration, and I keep thinking that the ideas we use to model human movement could also be used for animals. Understanding and predicting how wildlife moves could help us build robots that work in forests while respecting the animals that live there. I have always been drawn to collaborating across fields, because that is where something truly new and exciting can happen.

What do you do when you're not researching?

I love exploring new places. Travelling, experiencing different cultures and talking to local people always give me new energy, and my PhD has been a great opportunity for this, with conferences and research visits across Europe, Asia and the Americas. At home, I spend as much time as I can in Swedish nature. Thanks to allemansrätten, the whole forest feels like a place to explore, and I love walking there, picking berries and mushrooms, and finding a quiet lake to relax by.

Thank you Yufei!