Chenyu Zhao

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PhD Candidate, AESE Group, Imperial College London, United Kingdom.

I am currently a PhD candidate at the Adaptive Emergency System Engineering (AESE) Group, Imperial College London in UK, under the supervision of Prof. Julie A. McCann. Before that, I received my master’s degree in 2025, and was a researcher at the AIoT Lab within the institution of Data and Information, Tsinghua University, under the supervision of Prof. Xinlei Chen. I received a B.E. degree in Electronic Information Science and Technology from Northwest University in China.

My current work focuses on advancing sensing, control, and edge computing within lightweight drone-based systems. I enjoy building proof-of-concepts for innovative applications, encompassing both hardware and software aspects.

Emails: chenyu.zhao25@imperial.ac.uk or zhaocyhi@gmail.com

Research Interests: Mobile Computing, Cyber-Physical Systems, Internet of Things, Sensing, Embedded AI, Robotics, and Quadrotors and Drones. You can find details in my CV.

Email      Google Scholar      LinkedIn      Github      CV

News

[ 2025.09 ]
  • I was excited to join the Department of Computing to pursue my Ph.D degree at Imperial College London, UK !
    • [ 2025.06 ]
  • I was awarded the Excellent Master Graduate of Beijing from Tsinghua University!
    • [ 2025.06 ]
  • I graduated from Tsinghua University and obtained my Master's degree !
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    [ 2024.12 ]
  • Our team won the 1st prize (50kRMB) of the Low-Altitude Economy Flight Management Challenge (Meituan)!
    • [ 2024.10 ]
  • I was awarded the First-honor Scholarship of Tsinghua University !
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    [ 2024.10 ]
  • I received the Student Travel Grant(STG) for MobiCom 2024 in US from SIGMOBILE !
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    [ 2024.10 ]
  • I have been nominated for the National Scholarship for Postgraduate from Ministry of Education of PRC !
    		•
    [ 2024.10 ]
  • Our papers AirTouch received all four badges from ACM Artifact Evaluation !
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    [ 2024.08 ]
  • Our poster won the 1st Prize in International Workshop on Learning and Information Theory (WOLIT’24) !
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    [ 2024.08 ]
  • Our papers FormerReckoning and Distill Drops into Data are accepted by ACM PICASSO 2024 Workshop !
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    [ 2024.06 ]
  • Our work AirTouch is accepted by ACM MobiCom 2024 !
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    [ 2023.12 ]
  • We win the Excellent Innovative Award in 1st Low-Altitude Economy Flight Management Challenge Creative Competition hold by Meituan Inc. !
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    [ 2023.12 ]
  • Our paper TransformLoc is accepted by IEEE INFOCOM 2024 (Acceptance Rate: 19.5%) !
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    [ 2023.07 ]
  • Our papers SmoothLander and CaliFormer are accepted by ACM Ubicomp 2023 CPD !
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    [ 2022.07 ]
  • I received my bachelor's degrees and was awarded the Excellent Graduate Honor from Northwest University and Shaanxi Province, respectively!
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    Selected Publications

    1. AirTouch
      airtouch.png
      Foes or Friends: Embracing Ground Effect for Edge Detection on Lightweight Drones
      Chenyu Zhao*, Ciyu Ruan*, Jingao Xu, Haoyang Wang, Shengbo Wang, Jirong Zha, Jiaqi Li, Zheng Yang, Yunhao Liu, Xiao-Ping Zhang, and Xinlei Chen†
      In 2024 Proceedings of the 30th Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking (MobiCom2024), 2024
      PDF Video Code Poster Slides
    2. SmoothLander
      smoothlander.png
      SmoothLander: A Quadrotor Landing Control System with Smooth Trajectory Guarantee Based on Reinforcement Learning
      Chenyu Zhao*, Haoyang Wang*, Jiaqi Li, Fanhang Man, Shilong Mu, Wenbo Ding, Xiao-Ping Zhang, and Xinlei Chen†
      In Adjunct Proceedings of the 2023 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing & the 2023 ACM International Symposium on Wearable Computing (Ubicomp2023), 2023
      PDF Slides
    3. MAV Tactile
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      Demo Abstract: Bio-inspired Tactile Sensing for MAV Landing with Extreme Low-cost Sensors
      Chenyu Zhao*, Ciyu Ruan*, Shengbo Wang, Jirong Zha, Haoyang Wang, Jiaqi Li, Yuxuan Liu, Xuzhe Wang, and Xinlei Chen†
      In 2024 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Information Processing in Sensor Networks (IPSN24), 2024
      PDF
    4. FormerReckoning
      formerreckoning.png
      FormerReckoning: Physics Inspired Transformer for Accurate Inertial Navigation
      Jiaqi Li*, Chenyu Zhao*, Yuzhu Mao, Xinlei Chen, Wenbo Ding†, Jianzong Wang, and Xiaoyang Qu
      In 2024 Proceedings of 7th International Workshop on Physics Embedded AI Solutions in Mobile Computing (PICASSO 2024), 2024
      PDF
    5. Distill Drops into Data
      Distill.jpeg
      Distill Drops into Data: Event-based Rain-Background Decomposition Network
      Ciyu Ruan*, Chenyu Zhao*, Chenxin Liang, Xinyu Luo, Jingao Xu, and Xinlei Chen†
      In 2024 Proceedings of 7th International Workshop on Physics Embedded AI Solutions in Mobile Computing (PICASSO 2024), 2024
      PDF
    6. CaliFormer
      califormer.png
      CaliFormer: Leveraging Unlabeled Measurements to Calibrate Sensors with Self-supervised Learning
      Haoyang Wang*, Yuxuan Liu*, Chenyu Zhao, Jiayou He, Wenbo Ding, and Xinlei Chen†
      In Adjunct Proceedings of the 2023 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing & the 2023 ACM International Symposium on Wearable Computing (Ubicomp23), 2023
      PDF Poster
    7. TransformLoc
      transformloc.png
      TransformLoc: Transforming MAVs into Mobile Localization Infrastructures in Heterogeneous Swarms
      Haoyang Wang*, Jingao Xu, Chenyu Zhao, Zihong Lu, Yuhan Cheng, Xuecheng Chen, Xiao-Ping Zhang, Yunhao Liu, and Xinlei Chen†
      In Proceedings of the 2024 IEEE International Conference on Computer Communications (INFOCOM2024), 2024
      PDF
    8. Volunteer Matching
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      Demo Abstract: A Spatio-Temporal Embedding Model for Public Transit-Guided Volunteer Task Matching
      Wang Xuzhe, Chen Gao, Weichen Zhang, Chengzhao Yu, Chenyu Zhao, and Xinlei Chen†
      In 2024 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Information Processing in Sensor Networks (IPSN24), 2024
      PDF
    9. TLJ
      tlj.png
      TransformLoc: Transforming MAVs into Mobile Localization Infrastructures in Heterogeneous Swarms (Under view)
      Haoyang Wang, Chenyu Zhao, Yuhan Cheng, Xuecheng Chen, Jingao Xu, Xiao-Ping Zhang, Yunhao Liu, and Xinlei Chen†
      In IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing (TMC), 2024
    10. Dark Elves
      darkelves.png
      Dark Elves: Precise Perception Methods for Drones in Low-Light Environments (Under view)
      Qian Zhang*, Weichen Zhang*, Chenyu Zhao, Fanhang Man, Xin Zan, Fei Qiao, Xiao-Ping Zhang, Jingao Xu, Yunhao Liu, and Xinlei Chen†
      In 2024 Proceedings of 7th International Workshop on Physics Embedded AI Solutions in Mobile Computing (PICASSO 2024), 2024