Papers
39
Total Citations
520
H-Index
12
About
Wonpil Yu is a robotics researcher whose work spans mobile robot navigation, localization, sensor fusion, and human-robot interaction. Best known for his provocative 2010 study, "How Safe Are Service Robots in Urban Environments? Bullying a Robot" — his most cited work with 143 citations — Yu investigated the social acceptability of robots deployed in public spaces, revealing important behavioral insights that continue to inform discussions around robot safety and societal integration. Beyond social robotics, he has made significant contributions to autonomous navigation, developing innovative approaches to monocular visual odometry that address the fundamental challenge of scale ambiguity using planar motion constraints, work that has attracted dozens of citations within the autonomous vehicles and robotics communities. His research on sensor fusion — combining DGPS, INS, RFID, infrared landmarks, and sonar — has advanced reliable indoor and outdoor robot localization. Yu also contributed foundational work on ubiquitous robotic spaces, envisioning integrated physical, semantic, and virtual frameworks for robotic service delivery. His efficient coarse-to-fine path planning algorithm further demonstrates his commitment to practical, deployable robotics solutions. Collectively, Yu's body of work reflects a researcher who bridges theoretical rigor with real-world applicability, shaping how robots navigate, perceive, and coexist with humans.
Research Focus
Key Achievements
Top Papers
- 1How safe are service robots in urban environments? Bullying a robot143 citations · 2010
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- 3Design and Implementation of a Ubiquitous Robotic Space25 citations · 2009
- 4Resolving scale ambiguity for monocular visual odometry25 citations · 2013
- 5A coarse-to-fine approach for fast path finding for mobile robots24 citations · 2009
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- 9Sonar Grid Map Based Localization for Autonomous Mobile Robots14 citations · 2008
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