Zhi Li

Robotics Engineering

Assistant Professor

Affiliated Department or Office:

Robotics Engineering

Education:

BS Mechanical Engineering China Agricultural University 2006

MS Mechanical Engineering University of Victoria (BC, Canada) 2009

PhD Computer Engineering University of California at Santa Cruz 2014

Postdoc Electrical & Computer Engineering Duke University 2016

My research bridges the gap between human-robot interaction and human movement science. I am particularly interested in the design of human-robot interfaces and assistive robot autonomy, based on the understanding of the perception-action coupling of humans and cyber-human systems. At WPI, I primarily work on tele-nursing robots and assisted teleoperation interfaces. I also have extensive experience in exoskeletons for rehabilitation and tele-surgical robots.

zli11@wpi.edu

Office Location

85 Prescott 223C

Personal Website

Research Lab

Human-inspired Robotics Lab (HiRo)

Research Interests

Research Interests:

Human-robot Interaction

Tele-Nursing Robots

Perception-action Coupling

Exoskeleton for stroke rehabilitation

Scholarly Work

Heramb Nemlekar, Dharini Dutia, Zhi Li, “Object Transfer Point Estimation for Fluent Human-Robot Handovers”, Accepted by 2019 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA). - 2019

Kenechukwu C. Mbanisi, Hideyuki Kimpara, Tess Meier, Michael Gennert and Zhi Li “Learning Coordinated Vehicle Maneuver Motion Primitives from Human Demonstration”, In 2018 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), pp. 6560-6565. - 2018

Zhi Li, Peter Moran, Qingyuan Dong, Ryan Shaw, Kris Hauser, “Development of a Tele-Nursing Mobile Manipulator for Remote Care-giving in Quarantine Areas”, In IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), pp. 3581-3586. 2017. - 2017

Zhi Li, Dejan Milutinovic and Jacob Rosen, “From Reaching to Reach-to-grasp: the Arm Posture Difference and its Implications on Human Motion Control Strategy”. Experimental Brain Research, 235(5), pp.1627-1642, 2017 - 2017

Zhi Li, Dejan Milutinović, and Jacob Rosen. “Design of a Multi-Arm Surgical Robotic System for Dexterous Manipulation.” Journal of Mechanisms and Robotics 8(6), Oct. 2016 - 2016

Zhi Li, Dejan Milutinovic and Jacob Rosen, “Spatial Map of Synthesized Criteria for the Redundancy Resolution of Human Arm Movements”. IEEE Transactions on Neural Systems & Rehabilitation Engineering, 23(6), pp. 1020 - 1030, Nov. 2015 - 2015

News

SEE MORE NEWS ABOUT ZHI LI

WPI researchers (from left) Soussan Djamasbi, Jeanine Skorinko, Winston Soboyejo, Cagdas Onal (principal investigator), Yunus Telliel, Jing Xiao, Pratap Rao and Jane Li with the Baxter research robot.

WPI Secures $3M NSF Grant to Study Human-Robot Interaction

October 24, 2019

Media Coverage

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Worcester Business Journal

WPI receives $3M to study human-robot workplace interaction

The Worcester Business Journal reported on WPI receiving $3 million from the National Science Foundation to study human-robot interaction in the workplace. Eight WPI researchers are involved: Cagdas Onal (principal investigator), Yunus Telliel, Jeanine Skorinko, Winston Soboyejo, Jing Xiao, Pratap Rao, Soussan Djamasbi and Jane Li.