Academic Staff

BEng (BISTU); MEng (CAU); PhD (PolyU); IEEE Senior Member; ION Member

Prof. Weisong Wen is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Aeronautical and Aviation Engineering (AAE) at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) and the founding Director of the Trustworthy AI and Autonomous Systems Laboratory (TAS Lab). He received a BEng in Mechanical Engineering from Beijing Information Science and Technology University (BISTU) in 2015 and an MEng from China Agricultural University (CAU) in 2017, and completed his PhD at PolyU in 2020. He was a visiting PhD student at the University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley) in 2018. Before joining PolyU as an Assistant Professor in 2023, he was a Research Assistant Professor at PolyU AAE from 2021.

Prof. Wen’s research advances safe and trustworthy autonomy along two closely connected directions. The first is embodied AI for autonomous robots — drones, legged/quadruped robots, and intelligent vehicles — where he develops foundation models and reinforcement learning for robot perception, control, and planning that enable machines to reason and act reliably in the open world. The second is high-precision and trustworthy positioning and localization, built on the tight fusion of GNSS, LiDAR, camera, and IMU and on robust SLAM. Across both directions, his overarching goal is autonomy that is safety-certifiable, reliable, and trustworthy. He has published 60+ SCI journal papers and 50+ conference papers with 3,600+ citations (h-index 31) and several international patents, and has secured multiple projects in research funding as Principal Investigator from sources including the Hong Kong Research Grants Council (RGC), the Hong Kong Smart Traffic Fund, and the Innovation and Technology Fund, together with industry partners such as Huawei, Tencent, HONOR, Meituan, and Esri. He was named among the World’s Top 2% Most-Cited Scientists (Stanford University) for 2023, 2024, and 2025 and is an IEEE Senior Member and an Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology.

Prospective PhD students, postdoctoral fellows, and research assistants (RAs) interested in embodied AI and trustworthy autonomy are welcome to contact Prof. Weisong Wen.

Area of Specialization

Embodied AI and foundation models for autonomous robots — drones, legged/quadruped robots, and intelligent vehicles; reinforcement learning for robot perception, control, and planning; and high-precision, trustworthy multi-sensor positioning and localization through tightly coupled GNSS/LiDAR/camera/IMU fusion and SLAM — all centred on safety-certifiable, reliable, and trustworthy autonomy.

Selected Honours and Awards

• World’s Top 2% Most-Cited Scientists, Stanford University (2023, 2024, 2025)

• Silver Medal, 51st International Exhibition of Inventions of Geneva (2025)

• Faculty of Engineering Research Grant Achievement Award, PolyU (2025)

• Top Cited Paper Award, NAVIGATION: Journal of the Institute of Navigation (2022)

• TechConnect World Innovation Award, USA (2021)

• Best Presentation Award, ION GNSS+ (2020)

Selected Journal Publications: (*: corresponding author)

1. Wang, Y., Qiu, S., Huang, Y., Wen, W.* (2026). D2IO: Diffusion-Based Deep Inertial Odometry for Pedestrian Indoor Localization. IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics.
2. Wang, X., Liu, X., Lyu, Z., Xu, R., Wen, W.* (2026). R²TT: High-Accuracy 3D Localization Using Ray-Tracing-Based Wi-Fi RTT Virtual Fingerprints for Challenging Scenarios. IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing.
3. Yang, P., Wen, W.*, Yang, R., Chen, Y., Tsang, C.C. (2026). Wall Inspector: Quadrotor Control in Wall-proximity Through Model Compensation. Aerospace Science and Technology.
4. Yang, R., Wen, W.*, Yang, P., Zhao, Z., Huang, F. (2025). Unified Sufficient Conditions for Exact Convex Relaxation of Nonconvex Optimal Control Problems. IEEE Transactions on Aerospace and Electronic Systems.
5. Hu, R., Xu, P., Zhong, Y., Wen, W. (2025). pyrtklib: An Open-source Package for Tightly Coupled Deep Learning and GNSS Integration for Positioning in Urban Canyons. IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems.
6. Zhang, J., Liu, X., Wen, W.*, Hsu, L.T. (2024). Safety-Quantifiable Planar-Feature-based LiDAR Localization with a Prior Map for Intelligent Vehicles in Urban Scenarios. IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Vehicles.
7. Liu, X., Wen, W.*, Hsu, L.T. (2023). GLIO: Tightly-coupled GNSS/LiDAR/IMU Integration for Continuous and Drift-free State Estimation of Intelligent Vehicles in Urban Areas. IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Vehicles.
8. Wen, W., Hsu, L.T. (2022). 3D LiDAR Aided GNSS NLOS Mitigation in Urban Canyons. IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems.
9. Wen, W., Pfeifer, T., Bai, X., Hsu, L.T. (2021). Factor Graph Optimization for GNSS/INS Integration: A Comparison with the Extended Kalman Filter. NAVIGATION: Journal of the Institute of Navigation, 68(2), 315–331.
10. Wen, W., Zhang, G., Hsu, L.T. (2021). GNSS Outlier Mitigation via Graduated Non-convexity Factor Graph Optimization. IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, 71(1), 297–310.
11. Wen, W., Hsu, L.T. (2020). Correcting NLOS by 3D LiDAR and Building Height to Improve GNSS Single Point Positioning. NAVIGATION: Journal of the Institute of Navigation, 66(4), 705–718.
12. Wen, W., Bai, X., Kan, Y.C., Hsu, L.T. (2019). Tightly Coupled GNSS/INS Integration via Factor Graph and Aided by Fish-eye Camera. IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, 68(11), 10651–10662.

 Selected Conference and Workshop Publications

1. Yang, P., Wen, W.*, Yang, R., Zhang, Y., Hu, J., Chen, Y., Xiao, N., Zhao, J. (2026). Integrated Planning and Control on Manifolds: Factor Graph Representation and Toolkit. IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA).
2. Huang, F., Zhong, Y.*, Chen, H., Su, D., Wu, J., Wen, W., Hsu, L.T. (2025). Roadside GNSS Aided Multi-Sensor Integrated System for Vehicle Positioning in Urban Areas. IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS).
3. Chen, Z., Chen, H., Qi, Y., Zhong, S., Feng, D., Wu, J., Wen, W., Liu, M. (2024). RELEAD: Resilient Localization with Enhanced LiDAR Odometry in Adverse Environments. IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA).
4. Zhong, S., Chen, H., Qi, Y., Feng, D., Chen, Z., Wu, J., Wen, W., Liu, M. (2024). COLRIO: LiDAR-Ranging-Inertial Centralized State Estimation for Robotic Swarms. IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA).
5. Xiao, N., Wen, W.*, Hu, J., Yang, P., Zhao, J., Wu, C., Bai, S. (2024). SUG-UAV: A Multirotor Dataset with Multi-sensor Integration in Indoor and Urban Areas. International Conference on Indoor Positioning and Indoor Navigation (IPIN).
6. Bai, S., Wen, W.*, Yu, Y., Hsu, L.T. (2024). Invariant Extended Kalman Filtering for Pedestrian Deep-Inertial Odometry. ISPRS Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences.
7. Yang, P., Wen, W. (2023). Tightly Joining Positioning and Control for Trustworthy Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Based on Factor Graph Optimization. IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITSC).
8. Wen, W., Hsu, L.T. (2021). Towards Robust GNSS Positioning and Real-time Kinematic Using Factor Graph Optimization. IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 5884–5890.
9. Hsu, L.T., Kubo, N., Wen, W., et al. (2021). UrbanNav: An Open-sourced Multisensory Dataset for Benchmarking Positioning Algorithms Designed for Urban Areas. ION GNSS+ 2021.
10. Wen, W., Zhou, Y., Zhang, G., Fahandezh-Saadi, S., Bai, X., Zhan, W., Tomizuka, M., Hsu, L.T. (2020). UrbanLoco: A Full Sensor Suite Dataset for Mapping and Localization in Urban Scenes. IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2310–2316.
11. Wen, W., Kan, Y.C., Hsu, L.T. (2019). Performance Comparison of GNSS/INS Integrations Based on EKF and Factor Graph Optimization. ION GNSS+ 2019.
12. Wen, W., Zhang, G., Hsu, L.T. (2018). Exclusion of GNSS NLOS Receptions Caused by Dynamic Objects in Heavy-Traffic Urban Scenarios Using Real-time 3D Point Cloud. IEEE/ION Position, Location and Navigation Symposium (PLANS), 158–165.