Welcome, on board!

Despite knowing the journey and where it leads, I embrace it, and I welcome every moment of it.

-- Dr. Louise Banks, Arrival (2016)


Vision

Inspired by Chinese philosopher 'Mozi' (墨子) and the ideas from Mohism about 'Universal Love, non-attack' (非攻 兼爱), I believe that technology should contribute to humanity toward a healthier, safer, and higher quality of life.

I am an enthusiast and believer in the new revolution for robotics (Artificial General Intelligence for Robotics and Embedded Agent). I believe that the 'real2sim (meta-verse) and sim2real' can bring the community (machine learning, computer vision and graphics, and robotics) towards the era of technology beyond first-principle-based methods and control theory. Yet, there is a huge research gap towards this revolution. I believe robotics can be one of the solutions for population aging via the autonomous system and human-robot collaboration.

I am a part-time researcher in AI for Health and Science (medical imaging, intra-operative imaging for surgical robotics, ML for accelerating CFD optimization and more to be explored).


Research Interest

  • Robot Learning
  • Multi-robot Path Planning
  • Graph Neural Networks (GNNs)
  • Imitation Learning
  • Reinforcement Learning
  • Computer Vision (Medical Imaging)

Openning

I am actively looking for self-motivated students to apply 2025 Fall PhD (Fully Fund Position) to work with me at University of Macau. I am also open to collaboration opportunities. Feel free to contact by Email (qingbiaoli[AT]um.edu.mo). Details of my CV can be found in PDF.

Biography

I am working as an assistant professor at Faculty of Science and Technology at University of Macau from Aug 2024. Piror that, qingbiao Li was postdoc researcher at Oxford Robotics Institue at University of Oxford. I obtained a PhD student at ProrokLab in the Digital Technology Group (DTG) at the University of Cambridge under the supervision of Prof Amanda Prorok. During my PhD, I focus on communication-aware motion planning for multi-robot coordination. I am investigating Graph Neural Networks (GNN) to build communication channels for multi-agent and multi-robot systems so that they can learn how to communicate between each other explicitly. My research can be applied to mobility-on-demand systems, automated warehouses, and smart cities.

Prior to joining Cambridge, I was working in the Hamlyn Centre at Imperial College London, founded by Prof Guang-Zhong Yang and the Lord Ara Darzi, in the field of medical robotics and healthcare to earn my MRes in Medical Robotics and Image-Guided Intervention. I was supervised by Prof Daniel Elson for an eight-month research project about oxygen saturation (StO2) estimation, and graduated with a distinction. I also hold an MEng degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Edinburgh.

I have published papers in the medical imaging area (IJCARS) and the robotics field (IEEE Humanoids, IEEE IROS, IEEE ICRA, IEEE RA-L and AAMAS). I have served as a reviewer for IEEE IROS, IEEE ICRA, IEEE RA-L, IEEE T-RO, Autonomous Robots (AURO) and AAMAS.

News

2024 News: I started to work as Assistant Professor at Faculty of Science and Technology at University of Macau since Aug 2024.

2023 News: I started to conduct Postdoc Research at CRG at Oxford Robotics Instistue at University of Oxford since Feb 2023.

2023 News: I submitted my PhD thesis at University of Cambridge.

2023 News: Our paper got accepted in Nature Machine Intelligence 2023.

2023 News: Our paper was awarded Best Paper at CoPerception Workshop at ICRA 2023 and accepted at IROS 2023.

2023 News: Our paper got accepted in ICRA 2023.

2023 News: Our paper got accepted in RAL 2023.

2022 News: As there is way more noise that interrupts our daily study and work, let us come here to study and work with quiet music and a nice view of Cambridge on my personal YouTube called 'Study Room of Qingbiao Li' and Douyu Channel called '格拉夫暖男的自习室' daily. Welcome to join our 'Study_Room_Graphnuannan' and Bilibili.

2022 News: I am deeply appreciated to receive Chui Wen Mei Memorial Bursary to support my final period of my PhD.

2022 News: Our paper got accepted in SSRR 2022.

2022 News: Our paper was awarded Publication of the Year by the Department of Computer Science and Technology at the University of Cambridge.

2022 News: Our paper got accepted in TSP 2022.

2022 News: Our (MPhil student co-supervised by me, Matthew Malencia, Prof Amanda Prorok) paper (GNNs for TSP) got accepted in ICLR 2022.

2022 News: Our system paper (the first truly decentralized robotics system based on GNNs) got accepted in ICRA 2022. Feel free to access our public repo.

2022 News: Our blue-sky paper got accepted in AAMAS 2022.

2022 News: Invited talk about 'Graph Neural Networks from Robot Learning and Beyond' at ShenlanXueyuan as part of an online course related to Graph Neural Networks developed by Prof Jiliang Tang. Obtain over 1k view till now.

2021 News: My Google Scholar reached 100 citations. My paper ( Graph MAPF) published at IROS 2020 got 90 citations, and our GitHub repo [1] got 115 stars and [2] got 22 stars so far.

2021 News: From July 2021 to Nov 2021, I am working on Project Silica during my internship at Microsoft Research Cambridge. I am exploring explainable RL-based approaches to scheduling in the Silica glass library, towards a scheduler for production deployment.

2021 News: Invited talk about 'Message-Aware Graph Attention Networks for Large-Scale Multi-Robot Path Planning' at the University of Pennsylvania.

2021 News: Our paper got accepted in TAC 2021.

2021 News: Our paper (MAGAT) got accepted in RA-L 2021.

2020 News: Invited talk about 'From Graph Neural Networks to Decentralized Multi-Robot Path Planning' at Zhejiang University.

2020 News: Our paper got accepted in ICRA 2021.

2020 News: Our paper (G2RL) got accepted in RA-L 2020.

2020 News: Our paper (Graph-MAPF) got accepted in IROS 2020.

2021 News: Invited talk about 'Graph Neural Networks for Decentralized Path Planning' at Robotics X Tencent, Shenzhen, China.

2019 News: Our paper got accepted in IPCAI-IPCAI Special Issue 2019.

2018 News: Our papers ( [1] [2] ) got accepted in Hamlyn Symposium.

2017 News: Our paper got accepted in IEEE Humanoid 2017.


Publications

Journal

Conference