On 4 November 2026, TASLAB PhD student YANG Peiwen successfully passed his PhD oral defense at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. His dissertation, supervised by Prof. Weisong Wen and co-supervised by Prof. Li-Ta Hsu, is titled Towards Agile and Reliable Autonomy: A Unified Framework for Planning, Control, and Adaptation in Aerial Robotics.
Celebrating YANG Peiwen's successful PhD oral defense at PolyU on 4 November 2026.
His doctoral research investigates how shared representations can improve agile and reliable multirotor flight, connecting trajectory planning, predictive control, dynamics adaptation and positioning. The dissertation brings together four complementary research directions:
- Collision-aware trajectory generation (AeroTrajGen), combining a learned diffusion motion prior with guidance to generate obstacle-aware reference trajectories;
- Model predictive control on manifolds (FactorMPC), using a modular factor-graph formulation to connect vehicle dynamics, trajectory tracking and obstacle response;
- Online dynamics calibration and wall-effect compensation (ODMC / SC-MPC), adapting models to changing aerodynamics and improving flight tracking near walls; and
- Joint positioning and control (JPCM), sharing estimation and control states to improve tracking under positioning uncertainty.
These contributions explore a common optimization language for aerial autonomy, supported by component-level evaluations in trajectory planning, simulation, quadrotor flight, dynamics calibration and noisy-positioning control tests.
The oral examination was conducted by a Board of Examiners comprising:
- Prof. Chih-Yung WEN, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University — Chair of the Board of Examiners;
- Prof. Carlos Jorge Ferreira SILVESTRE, University of Macau — External Examiner;
- Prof. Ning TAN, Sun Yat-sen University — External Examiner; and
- Prof. Weisong WEN, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University — Internal Member.
We sincerely thank all members of the Board for their time, careful review of the thesis, and insightful questions and suggestions during the defense. We also thank Peiwen’s supervisors and collaborators for their guidance and support throughout his PhD journey.
TASLAB warmly congratulates Peiwen on this important milestone and wishes him every success in the next stage of his career!