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About

Wonsuk Lee is a robotics researcher whose work spans rescue robotics, whole-body motion control, and advanced sampling-based control algorithms. He is perhaps best known for his pivotal role in developing HURCULES, a military rescue robot designed for casualty extraction on the battlefield, a project that earned 62 citations and demonstrated his ability to bridge mechanical design with sophisticated control methodologies. His foundational contributions to whole-body motion control — including task-priority strategies and robust closed-loop inverse kinematics — established core frameworks for operating redundant robotic systems in complex, unstructured disaster environments. More recently, Lee expanded his research into model predictive control, authoring the highly regarded "Smooth Model Predictive Path Integral Control Without Smoothing" (2022, 52 citations), which introduced an elegant sampling-based approach enabling smooth action generation in nonlinear systems without relying on external smoothing algorithms — a meaningful theoretical advance with broad applications across robotics platforms. His work on tele-operated rescue robots and real-time EtherCAT-based software architectures further reflects his commitment to translating theoretical innovations into deployable systems. Across his career, Lee has accumulated over 150 citations, establishing himself as a meaningful contributor to both disaster-response robotics and optimal control research.