Human-Centered Interpretable Autonomy with Formal Logic: A Unified Framework for Reasoning, Learning, and Control
Mingyu Cai is an Assistant Professor in the Departments of Mechanical Engineering and Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of California, Riverside, where he leads the Robotics and Explainable AI Lab (REAL). He also serves as an advisor to the UCR Robotics Program and as a cooperating faculty member in Electrical and Computer Engineering. His research spans robotics, machine learning, control, and formal methods, with a focus on interpretable and safe autonomous systems, human–robot interaction, and physical AI. He received the NSF CAREER Award in 2027. Prior to joining UCR, he was a Research Scientist at the Honda Research Institute from 2023 to 2024. He completed postdoctoral training at the Autonomous and Intelligent Robotics Laboratory at Lehigh University, and collaborated with MIT Lincoln Laboratory and Boston University as a postdoctoral research associate. He received his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Iowa in 2021, and earned his M.S. from the University of Florida and B.Eng. from Beijing Institute of Technology.