Xuelong Sun

About

Xuelong Sun is a robotics and computational neuroscience researcher whose work sits at the intersection of insect-inspired intelligence, autonomous navigation, and swarm robotics. Drawing heavily from the behavioral and neural mechanisms of insects, Sun has made significant contributions to bio-inspired robotics, developing models that translate nature's elegant solutions into practical autonomous systems. Among Sun's most influential contributions is foundational work on ring attractor models for sensory cue integration, which has accumulated 26 citations and underpins modern approaches to robotic spatial orientation. Sun has also pioneered insect-inspired navigation frameworks that unify goal-approaching and collision-avoidance behaviors, reflecting a deep engagement with how biological systems achieve robust autonomy with minimal computational resources. A particularly distinctive thread in Sun's research is the development of multiple pheromone communication systems for swarm robotics — most notably the ColCOS Φ platform — enabling richer, more biologically faithful coordination among robot swarms. This line of work, collectively attracting over 40 citations, has expanded the toolkit available to swarm intelligence researchers. Sun's more recent contributions include I2Bot, an open-source multi-modal insect navigation simulator, signaling a commitment to accessible, community-driven science. Across all of this work, Sun consistently demonstrates that studying small-brained creatures can yield outsized insights for intelligent robotics.

Research Focus

Key Achievements

Top Papers

1. 1
   An Analysis of a Ring Attractor Model for Cue Integration

   26 citations · 2018
2. 2
   An insect-inspired model facilitating autonomous navigation by incorporating goal approaching and collision avoidance

   19 citations · 2023
3. 3
   ColCOS Φ: A Multiple Pheromone Communication System for Swarm Robotics and Social Insects Research

   16 citations · 2019
4. 4
   A Multiple Pheromone Communication System for Swarm Intelligence

   14 citations · 2021
5. 5
   Robustness of Bio-Inspired Visual Systems for Collision Prediction in Critical Robot Traffic

   11 citations · 2021
6. 6
   Investigating Multiple Pheromones in Swarm Robots - A Case Study of Multi-Robot Deployment

   9 citations · 2020
7. 7
   A Versatile Vision-Pheromone-Communication Platform for Swarm Robotics

   5 citations · 2021
8. 8
   I2Bot: an open-source tool for multi-modal and embodied simulation of insect navigation

   3 citations · 2025
9. 9
   A Bio-Inspired and Solely Vision-Based Model for Autonomous Navigation

   2 citations · 2024
10. 10
    ColCOS$\Phi$: A Multiple Pheromone Communication System for Swarm Robotics and Social Insects Research

    2 citations · 2019

Key Collaborators

Contact & Links