Yaokun Lu

Hello, I'm Yaokun Lu (卢耀坤)

I am a Ph.D. student at the School of Automation Science and Electrical Engineering, Beihang University (BUAA), advised by Prof. Lei Guo (Academician, CAS) and Prof. Jianzhong Qiao. I received my M.S. (2019) and B.S. (2016) from the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China (UESTC).

My research is on precise pointing of airborne electro-optical systems under disturbances and constraints: multi-stage (aircraft, gimbal, fast-steering mirror) line-of-sight control with learning-based Tube-MPC and disturbance separation, validated on a two-axis gimbal testbed I built. I also work on joint aircraft–gimbal coverage planning for fixed-wing UAVs in non-uniform wind.

Before my Ph.D., I was a senior algorithm engineer at DiDi Chuxing for three years (ETA prediction, passenger diversion and online dispatch models), a research assistant with Prof. Fei Gao at Zhejiang University’s Huzhou Institute for a year, and a flight-control intern at DJI. I founded a UAV company during my master’s study. I will graduate in June 2027 and am open to full-time positions from July 2027.

Email GitHub ORCID CV

News

  • Sep 2026: 📝 Submitted a first-author paper on learned Tube-MPC for gimbal pointing to IEEE TCAS-II.
  • Sep 2026: 🛩️ Built a compound-wing (quad-plane) VTOL with a belly-mounted gimbal pod for flight tests of joint aircraft–gimbal planning.
  • Jul 2026: 🌉 Joined the Jiangsu Communications Holding bridge-inspection challenge track (team led by Prof. Jianzhong Qiao). I work on onboard system integration, coverage-planning simulation and under-bridge flight tests.
  • Jun 2026: 🎤 Gave an oral presentation at IEEE ICCA 2026 in Almaty, Kazakhstan; the first-author paper is in the proceedings (DOI).
  • Jun 2026: 🎓 Passed my Ph.D. thesis proposal defense.
  • May 2026: 📝 Submitted a first-author paper on disturbance-separation MPC to IEEE TAES.
  • 2026: 📄 Co-authored paper published in Actuators (DOI).
  • Nov 2025: 📑 Patent application accepted on coupled gimbal-frame dynamics modeling for airborne electro-optical tracking on a moving base (CN 202511693696.5).
  • 2025: 📄 Co-authored paper published in IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics (DOI).
  • Aug 2024: 📄 Co-authored paper at ICGNC 2024, Changsha.
  • Sep 2023: 🚀 Started my Ph.D. at Beihang University.

Platforms

Test rigs and aircraft I have built or integrated.

Two-axis gimbal on a 6-DOF motion platform
Gimbal testbed (built) TCAS-II
Compound-wing VTOL with a gimbal pod
Compound-wing VTOL (built)
Fixed-wing VTOL with a nose gimbal pod
Fixed-wing VTOL
Hexacopter with gimbal and LiDAR
Hexacopter
Quadrotor with gimbal pod
Quadrotor

The gimbal testbed puts a two-axis current-command gimbal on a 6-DOF motion platform that reproduces aircraft base disturbances. The compound-wing (quad-plane) VTOL carries a belly-mounted gimbal pod with an ArduPlane autopilot and a companion computer.

Selected Publications

First-author work. * co-first author, † corresponding author. All publications →

Demos

Simulation Joint aircraft–gimbal coverage search over mountainous terrain. The fixed-wing UAV plans its flight path and gimbal pointing together to sweep the ground below. Main view: 3-D terrain and the flown path; insets: nose-chase camera and the gimbal's own view.

Bridge-inspection flight tests (2026). Jiangsu Communications Holding challenge track, team led by Prof. Jianzhong Qiao. I work on the onboard system integration, coverage-planning simulation and under-bridge flight tests.

FlightAutonomous pier orbit with no satellite fix. The drone circles a pier beneath a highway viaduct; the inset shows the live LiDAR map and trajectory. 1.5× speed.
FlightOnboard view under the bridge. Camera footage from a low flight along the pier corridor. 2× speed.
Flight dataFull-coverage inspection sortie. The flown serpentine path on the LiDAR map of the bridge underside, with each photo and its detected defects shown as it is taken. 6× speed.
Reconstruction3-D Gaussian-splatting reconstruction. Rendered views of the space beneath the viaduct, reconstructed from onboard video and scaled with the LiDAR point cloud.
SimulationUnder-bridge coverage planning. Viewpoints and a path wrap the deck and piers of a bridge model; the camera-covered area accumulates in green. 1.5× speed.
2015ROBOCON national-champion badminton robot rallying with then-UESTC President Prof. Yanrong Li. I was responsible for its stereo-vision shuttlecock tracking and landing-point prediction.

Talks & Awards