Jianwei Sun

Jianwei Sun

Autonomy Engineer at Skydio
Ph.D. in Robotics & Control (UCLA)

About Me

I am currently an Autonomy Engineer at Skydio, where I work on motion planning and control for both our primary quadrotor platform, Skydio X10, as well as the upcoming Skydio F10 autonomous fixed-wing vehicle. I obtained my Ph.D. from the Bionics Lab at the University of California, Los Angeles, under the supervision of Prof. Jacob Rosen. My research focused on control and estimation for physical human-robot interaction with exoskeleton and haptic robots, and also included:

  • Generating safety-focused virtual dynamics through admittance control for robotic systems
  • Pose estimation, sensor fusion, and delay mitigation for physical human-robot interaction
  • Feedback linearization-based control of nonlinear robot dynamics

My former internship experiences consist of one motion-planning and control internship at Skydio (Autonomy), two electrical engineering internships at Apple (Wearable Systems), and one software engineering internship at Intel (Programmable Solutions). My skillset includes robot motion planning and control, software development, and hardware characterization.

Education

  • Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering (Systems and Control), 2024
    University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)
  • M.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering (Systems and Control), 2020
    University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)
  • M.Sc. in Electrical Engineering and Information Technology, 2019
    Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zürich)
  • B.A.Sc. in Engineering Science (Electrical and Computer Engineering), 2017
    University of Toronto (UofT)

Select Publications

  • Virtually Constrained Admittance Control using Feedback Linearization for Physical Human-Robot Interaction with Rehabilitation Exoskeletons
    Jianwei Sun, Yasamin Foroutani, Jacob Rosen.
    IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics (TMECH), 2024.
  • A Safety-Focused Admittance Control Approach for Physical Human-Robot Interaction with Rigid Multi-Arm Serial Link Exoskeletons
    Jianwei Sun, Erik Harrison Kramer, Jacob Rosen.
    IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics (TMECH), 2024.
  • Sensor Reduction, Estimation, and Control of an Upper-Limb Exoskeleton.
    Jianwei Sun, Yang Shen, Jacob Rosen.
    IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L), 2021.
  • Vehicle platoon control with virtual path constraints.
    Jianwei Sun, Rajan Gill.
    IEEE Conference on Control Technology and Applications (CCTA), 2019.
    Best paper finalist.