Postdoctoral Scholar · University of South Florida

Xincheng Li.

Geometry, motion, and the control of robotic systems.

I study how geometry can help us understand and control movement, from coordinated groups of agents to robots that interact with people.

Explore my research View CV

A little background

About me

I am a Postdoctoral Scholar at the University of South Florida, working with Professor Udit Halder. My research connects geometric control, motion planning, and human–robot interaction, with recent work on collective motion and soft robotic grasping.

I received my Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Maryland, College Park in 2025, advised by Professor P. S. Krishnaprasad. My dissertation developed geometric models of human movement and control methods for interacting agents using Lie groups and equi-affine geometry.

Research group

Questions that drive my work

Research interests

Understanding movement.
Designing interaction.

Geometric control

Lie groups, symmetry, and optimal control as tools for understanding and designing motion.

Collective motion

Feedback control and leader–follower coordination in multi-agent systems.

Human & robot movement

Equi-affine models of human motion and geometry-based approaches to soft robotic grasping.

Papers & dissertation

Selected publications

Download BibTeX ↓

2026

Journal article

On Feedback Speed Control for a Planar Tracking

Xincheng Li, Tengyue Liu, Udit Halder

IEEE Control Systems Letters

Speed regulation for leader–follower formations, with stability analysis and mobile-robot experiments.

Publisher arXiv

BibTeX

@article{li2026feedback,
  title={On Feedback Speed Control for a Planar Tracking},
  author={Li, Xincheng and Liu, Tengyue and Halder, Udit},
  journal={IEEE Control Systems Letters},
  year={2026},
  doi={10.1109/LCSYS.2026.3708578}
}

2026

Accepted conference paper

Kinematics of continuum planar grasping

Udit Halder, Nicolas Echeverria Zambrano, Xincheng Li

IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC), accepted

A geometric framework for shaping a soft continuum arm around an object and assessing grasp quality.

arXiv Acceptance record

BibTeX

@misc{halder2026kinematics,
  title={Kinematics of continuum planar grasping},
  author={Halder, Udit and Echeverria Zambrano, Nicolas and Li, Xincheng},
  year={2026},
  eprint={2604.09800},
  archivePrefix={arXiv},
  primaryClass={cs.RO},
  note={Accepted at IEEE CDC 2026},
  url={https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.09800}
}

2025

Doctoral dissertation

Symmetry and Motion: Geometric Control of Human Agents

Xincheng Li

University of Maryland, College Park

Equi-affine geometry and optimal control for modeling human movement and coordinating interacting agents.

Dissertation record

BibTeX

@phdthesis{li2025symmetry,
  title={Symmetry and Motion: Geometric Control of Human Agents},
  author={Li, Xincheng},
  school={University of Maryland, College Park},
  year={2025},
  doi={10.13016/rglm-vbqv}
}

Theory into practice