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About

Xuemin Chi is a leading researcher in multi-robot systems and safety-critical control, whose work fundamentally advances how robots navigate and avoid collisions in dynamic environments. Their primary research areas span collision avoidance, control barrier functions (CBFs), and motion planning for distributed robotic systems. Chi’s most impactful contribution is the development of the "Velocity Obstacle for Polytopic Collision Avoidance" framework, which solves the long-standing challenge of real-time, scalable obstacle avoidance for robots with complex shapes—a paper that has garnered 36 citations since 2023. They have also pioneered the use of time-varying control barrier functions for unicycle-modeled robots, enabling both linear and angular velocity control for dynamic collision avoidance, as demonstrated in their 2023 work (13 citations). More recently, Chi introduced "Configuration Space Distance Fields for Manipulation Planning" (2024, 14 citations), a novel approach that leverages signed distance fields to simplify manipulation tasks. Their 2025 paper on velocity obstacle-based CBFs (8 citations) further bridges gaps in acceleration-controlled robots. With a growing citation record and innovative contributions to whole-body collision avoidance, Chi is shaping the future of safe, autonomous multi-robot coordination.