I work with Prof. Brian Williams on optimization and AI planning for autonomous systems in the MERS group in CSAIL. My passion lies in innovative research for solving real-world problems in the field.

I will complete my PhD program in December 2009, and am currently looking for full-time employment.
My thesis title - Kongming: A Hybrid Generative Planner for Temporally Extended Goals.
My thesis committee: Rodney Brooks, Andreas Hofmann, Brian Williams (chair), Patrick Winston.

News:

Successful demonstration of my planner Kongming on Odyssey IV, a very cool autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) designed and built by the MIT AUV Lab, in the Atlantic ocean (Cape Cod) in August 2009. The actual trajectory of the vehicle in one of the tests is plotted in Google Earth, see the "K" in yellow. See video of the demonstration of our system integration (Kongming + Kirk).

Publications:  

* Hui X. Li and Brian Williams, Kongming: A Hybrid Generative Planner for Temporally Extended Goals, to be submitted to Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research (JAIR) .

* Hui X. Li and Brian Williams, Generative Planning for Hybrid Systems based on Flow Tubes, the International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS), Sydney, Australia, 2008. (pdf)

* Hui X. Li and Brian Williams, What About Hybrid Planning, extended abstract, CSAIL Student Workshop 2006. (pdf)

* Lars Blackmore, Hui X. Li, and Brian Williams, A Probabilistic Approach to Optimal Robust Path Planning with Obstacles, in Proceedings of IEEE American Control Conference (ACC), 2006. (pdf)

* Hui X. Li and Brian Williams, Generalized Conflict Learning For Hybrid Discrete Linear Optimization, in Proceedings of the Eleventh International Conference on Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming (CP), Barcelona, Spain, 2005. (pdf)

* Hui X. Li, Generalized Conflict Learning For Hybrid Discrete Linear Optimization, Master's Thesis, MIT, 2005. (pdf)

* Hui X. Li and Brian Williams, Efficiently Solving Hybrid Logic Optimization Problems Through Generalized Conflict Learning, in Proceedings of the International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling Plan Execution Workshop (ICAPS), Monterey, CA. 2005. (pdf)

* Coauthor, Evolution of Supply Chain Management: Symbiosis of Adaptive Value Networks and ICT , by Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2004. ISBN-10: 1-4020-7812-9, 544 p., Hardcover

Summer internship in Parsons Lab (July 2003 – Sep. 2003):

In charge of the optimization algorithms and GAMS coding in Prof. Dennis Mclaughlin’s Water China Project ( looking at how to reallocate water and land resources to maximize agricultural output of China). ---- A cool project!

Comments:

* Something funny: last night when I left Stata I met Richard Stallman at the entrance, where on the doors it's written "Gates Building". He told me that every time he passes here he gives it a finger, and then he did it. ----- 4/12/05

* I figured out in Las Vegas: doing research is just like playing slots. Everyone of us keeps inserting the coins, hoping he/she can be the winner. It is true that someone will be the winner, but who? Enthusiasm and hard work are necessary, but not sufficient. You also need luck. Everyone before the winner has made a contribution , some of which may be even greater than that of the winner. However, that doesn't matter at all. Nobody knows who's on the way of the cumulation or who'll be on the top, but everybody knows it for sure that if giving up, he/she will never reach the top. So a good gambler's strategy is to enjoy the whole process of the cumulation without caring much about the result. ----- 12/20/01