Max Robotics — Global Service Robot Directory + US Certification

About

Minjing Yu is a researcher at the intersection of robotics, human-computer interaction, and cognitive science, with a primary focus on self-reconfigurable modular robots (SRMRs). Her major contributions include advancing the theoretical foundations of modular robotics—notably proving the NP-completeness of the optimal planning problem for such systems (2019, 9 citations)—and developing practical, accessible platforms like the EasySRRobot, an easy-to-build, optimized self-reconfigurable prototype designed to lower the barrier to entry in the field (2017, 7 citations). Yu has also authored a comprehensive survey on path planning for SRMRs (2017, 7 citations), providing a critical resource for researchers. Beyond hardware and algorithms, Yu has pioneered the use of modular robots as tools for cognitive enhancement. Her work demonstrates that tangible interaction with reconfigurable modular robots can significantly improve spatial reasoning performance—a key skill in STEM education (2018, 6 citations; 2019, 4 citations). She has further integrated multi-channel sensors into 3D-printed modular robots to enable richer tangible interactions (2018, 2 citations). With a cumulative citation count of 35 across her most-cited works, Yu’s research uniquely bridges robotics, education, and human-robot interaction, offering both theoretical insights and practical innovations that inspire new applications for modular systems.