Rongyu Yu is a Research Associate in Robotics and AI at the RCA Robotics Laboratory. Her research focuses on developing trustworthy, reliable and secure AI for autonomous robotic systems, with particular interests in agentic AI, AI safety and AI security.
Rong Yu's work spans human-centred robotics, secure teleoperation, vision-language reasoning and trustworthy LLM-based agents. She is currently working on the EPSRC-funded Circular Robot 5.0 project, where she is investigating AI-enabled approaches to improve the reliability, adaptability and longevity of industrial robots, supporting their maintenance, reuse and repurposing within more circular manufacturing systems.
She received her PhD in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from the University of Glasgow, where her doctoral research explored human behaviour-driven robotics and security. Her work investigated how behavioural information can be used to make robotic systems more secure, adaptive and responsive to their human operators. This included research into secure robotic teleoperation, behavioural biometrics, privacy-preserving learning, adversarial attacks and the security of cyber-physical robotic systems.
Rongyu has published research in leading robotics and security venues, including IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security, IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, and the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA).
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Research interests
Rong Yu's research considers the growing need for intelligent robotic systems to operate reliably in complex and potentially uncertain environments. As robots become increasingly autonomous and incorporate advanced AI models into perception, reasoning and decision-making, ensuring the trustworthiness and security of these systems becomes increasingly important. Rongyu's work examines these challenges from both technical and human-centred perspectives, considering how AI-enabled robots can reason, interact and make decisions while remaining secure, predictable and aligned with their intended operation.
Her recent research interests include vision-language reasoning and the development of trustworthy LLM-based and agentic AI systems for robotics. She is particularly interested in how foundation models and autonomous AI agents can be integrated with physical robotic platforms while addressing challenges around reliability, security, robustness and safe decision-making.
Current and recent projects
At the RCA, Rongyu is currently working on Circular Robot 5.0, an EPSRC-funded research programme investigating new approaches to extending the useful life of industrial robots and enabling a more circular model for robotics within manufacturing. Her work contributes AI and robotics expertise to the development of data-driven approaches for understanding robot condition, detecting changes in performance and supporting decisions around maintenance, reuse and repurposing. Through this work, she is exploring how trustworthy AI can help industrial robots remain useful, reliable and adaptable beyond their initial applications and operating contexts.
Her broader research ambition is to contribute to autonomous robotic systems that are not only increasingly intelligent, but also secure, trustworthy and capable of operating reliably alongside people in real-world environments.