Peter Zhi Xuan Li

Peter Zhi Xuan Li is a PhD candidate conducting interdisciplinary research at the intersection of robotics and low-power computing hardware, to enable energy-efficient computing for augmented reality, virtual reality, and autonomous navigation. His paradigm-shifting research addresses a key challenge in efficient computing, which is the cost of storing and accessing data from memory, by taking a memory-centric approach to designing algorithms and computing hardware. A MathWorks Fellowship will support Peter’s promising work in several exciting projects, including a new localization and mapping system-on-chip (SoC) that is highly energy efficient, robust to operating in challenging dynamic environments, and able to produce and store high-quality 3D maps in real- time. By co-designing new algorithms and specialized hardware, the SoC efficiently determines the position and orientation of any device using only visual and inertial measurements to enable a variety of exciting applications, from extended reality on wearable headsets to autonomous navigation of micro-robots. Peter’s research, which makes extensive use of MathWorks tools, offers exciting advances in energy-efficient computing and has great potential to power research and technology development at the intersection of many fields, including robotics, computer architecture, and circuit design.