I am Yongqi Dong, a Research Group Leader (AI & Automated Mobility) at RWTH Aachen University, a guest researcher at TU Delft, and previously a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley. With a broad interdisciplinary background, my ultimate goal is to employ Artificial Intelligence (AI) and multidisciplinary research as tools to shape a better world. To achieve this, I have focused on the transportation domain and explored various aspects of shared, smart, sustainable, and automated mobility.

Our group is actively seeking PhD students, (self-funded, e.g., CSC, DAAD, RWTH-AROP, RWTH-Theodore von Kármán Fellowship) visiting PhDs/RAs/Scholars, and Master's students (thesis projects) in the wide domain of Transportation & Traffic Engineering, Intelligent Transportation Systems, AI, Data Science, and Digital Twins. Typical research areas include:

• Connected Automated Vehicles
• Mixed-Autonomy Traffic
• Driving Risk Modelling
• Transport & Traffic Safety
• World (Action) Model for Automated Driving
• Socially Compliant Decision-making
• Multi-agent Deep Reinforcement Learning
• Shared Smart & Sustainable Mobility
• Smart Logistics & Delivery Robots
• Efficient AI for Sensing & Perception
• Lane Detection, Object Detection & Tracking
• Multi-modal Data Fusion & Data Mining in Transportation Research
• Vision-Language Model (VLM) and Vision-Language-Action (VLA)
• Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) for Domain Knowledge Embedding
• Deep Learning/Reinforcement Learning/VLM & VLA + RAG for Automated Mobility
• Explainable AI Applications in Mobility & Interdisciplinary Problems

Feel free to email me at yongqi.dong@rwth-aachen.de for research discussion and possible collaboration!

Bio

From January 2020 to May 2024, I was a member of the Traffic and Transportation Safety Lab supervised by Prof. Haneen Farah and Prof. Bart van Arem. My Ph.D. project is Safe, Efficient, and Socially Compliant Automated Driving in Mixed Traffic: Sensing, Anomaly Detection, Planning and Control [thesis]. The objective is to expand the Operational Design Domain (ODD) of automated vehicles with Artificial Intelligence, data-driven, and simulation-based methods. It is within the Safe and efficient operation of AutoMated and human drivEN vehicles in mixed traffic (SAMEN) project, funded by the Dutch Research Council (NWO).

From May 2023 to October 2023, I visited the Mechanical Systems Control Lab at UC Berkeley, supervised by Prof. Masayoshi Tomizuka. There, I cooperated with Dr. Chen Tang on topics related to socially compliant automated driving.

I hold a Master’s degree in Control Science and Engineering from Tsinghua University and a Bachelor’s degree in Telecommunication Engineering from Beijing Jiaotong University (BJTU). I had also spent time as a research intern at the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART).

My current research centres around the areas of Automated Vehicles, Smart & Shared Mobility, and Artificial Intelligence. I develop innovative Deep Learning models for sensing and perception, as well as Deep Reinforcement Learning frameworks for planning, management, and control, to enable Safe, Efficient, and Socially Compliant Smart & Automated Mobility. I have also delved into shared mobility, leveraging big data analytics and machine learning techniques to reveal the unique spatial-temporal patterns. My research works have been published in leading top‑tier journals and conferences, including Communications in Transportation Research (IF=14.5), Transportation Research Part C, IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems, and Computer-Aided Civil and Infrastructure Engineering, as well as IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITSC), IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics (SMC), and Transportation Research Board annual meeting (TRB).

For more information, please refer to my CV.

News

• 10/2026: 🎉 I am honored and delighted to receive the 2025 Best PhD Thesis Award (Sole Recipient) from Applied System Innovation, recognizing the contributions and impact of my doctoral research at Delft University of Technology. 🏆
• 08/2026:✈️ Supported by the RWTH Theodore von Kármán Fellowship for Outgoing Scholars, I have commenced a research visit at Monash University, Australia. During this stay, I will collaborate with Professor Hai Vu on topics related to world models for automated driving and risk modelling. 🚗
• 06/2026:🎉 I am delighted to share that my proposal for the RWTH Exploratory Research Space (ERS) Start program has been approved and awarded €19,927 in funding. This grant will support my exploratory research on Vision-Language Models (VLMs) for socially compliant automated vehicles in mixed traffic. 🚗
• 06/2026:🎉 Our paper, “Simulator-Based Visualization for Safe System-Oriented Public Participation in Urban Road Planning and Redesign”, has been accepted to the 10th Road Safety and Simulation Conference (RSS 2026), 23-26 June 2026, Naples, Italy. Looking forward to an excellent conference and great discussions on the future of road safety! 🚗
• 06/2026:🎉 I am happy to share that our paper, “A Latent-Centric Perspective on World Models for Autonomous Driving: Taxonomy, Evaluation, and Challenges”, has been published in the Proceedings of the 2026 IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR) Workshops (Denver, USA, 2026, pp. 4510-4519).
• 05/2026:🎉 I am happy to share that three of my papers have been accepted for presentation at the 6th Symposium on Management of Future Motorway and Urban Traffic Systems (MFTS 2026), which will take place on 14-15 September 2026 in Naples, Italy. I look forward to presenting my work and engaging with fellow researchers at the symposium.
• 02/2026:🚦We are organizing an invited session on AI-Empowered Automated Driving in Mixed Traffic [approved] to be held during the IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITSC), September 15-18, 2026 – Naples, Italy. We invite high-quality research contributions exploring how AI can advance sensing, perception, planning, and control, as well as the impact of automated vehicles in mixed traffic environments. 📌For topics of interest and submission details, please check the Call for Papers. Please submit your manuscript via the Papercept at https://its.papercept.net/conferences/scripts/start.pl/. Select “Submit a contribution to ITSC 2026”, and submit as an “Invited Session Paper” with code “88w8a”.
• 01/2026:🎉 I received the RWTH Aachen Theodore von Kármán Fellowship for Outgoing Scholars (7,362 €). It will support my research visit to Monash University, Australia.
• 10/2025:🚗 Excited to announce the publication of our new paper, Toward Developing Socially Compliant Automated Vehicles: Advances, Expert Insights, and A Conceptual Framework, in the journal of Communications in Transportation Research! The work presents a conceptual framework for socially compliant automated vehicles (SCAVs), paving the way for AVs that not only drive safely but also drive socially.
  🔗DOI: 10.1016/j.commtr.2025.100207.
• 09/2025:🚦Exciting news! We are guest editing a Special Issue on AI-Empowered Automated Driving in Mixed Traffic: From Sensing, Perception, to Planning and Control in IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems (IEEE T-ITS). We invite high-quality research contributions exploring how AI can advance sensing, perception, planning, and control in mixed traffic environments.
  📌For topics of interest and submission details, please check the Call for Papers.
• 09/2025: Our paper manuscript titled Parking Availability Prediction via Multi-Source Data Fusion with a Self-Supervised Learning-Enhanced Spatio-Temporal Inverted Transformer is now available as a preprint on arXiv at https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2509.04362.
• 07/2025: Our conference paper titled A Self-Supervised Transformer for Unusable Shared Bike Detection has been accepted by the 2025 IEEE 28th International Conference on Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITSC 2025). The preprint version is available at 🔗https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2505.00932.
• 06/2025: I am pleased to share that our work, titled Intelligent Anomaly Detection for Lane Rendering Using Transformer with Self-Supervised Pretraining and Customized Fine-Tuning, has been published in Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, 🔗 DOI: 10.1177/03611981251333341.
• 05/2025: I am happy to share that my penultimate journal article for my PhD thesis, titled Towards Developing Socially Compliant Automated Vehicles: Advances, Expert Insights, and A Conceptual Framework, has been accepted for publication in the Journal Communications in Transportation Research. It is currently in the publication process.
• 04/2025: [The workshop proposal has been approved.] Together with researchers from TU Delft, Tsinghua University, Monash University, and the University of Queensland, we are planning the 3rd edition of the Workshop on Automated Mobility in Mixed Traffic with the theme of Emerging Mixed Autonomy in the Era of AI. The workshop will be held at ITSC 2025. We have confirmed speakers, e.g., Prof. Junmin Wang (University of Texas at Austin) and Prof. Meead Saberi (University of New South Wales). We are currently still seeking potential speakers, preferably from industry. If you are planning to attend ITSC 2025 and find that our workshop aligns with your interests, please feel free to contact us at yongqi.dong@rwth-aachen.de. We look forward to seeing you in November 2025 in Gold Coast, Australia, during ITSC 2025. For the latest updates, please visit our workshop and interdisciplinary research committee websites: (https://www.itsc2025.mixedtraffic.org/ and https://www.mixedtraffic.org/). You can also stay informed by joining our mailing list: https://groups.google.com/g/emerging-mixed-traffic.
• 03/2025: Following an extensive but slow review period of over two years, we recently achieved acceptance for three journal manuscripts.

Miscellany

Inspired by Vivian Kong (江旻憓) and her style, I follow a mostly vegetarian & sustainable lifestyle (especially when cooking by myself) alongside a minimalist mindset. I enjoy practicing Tai Chi, meditation, reading, and traveling in nature.
I view travelling, reading, and meditation all as pathways to explore the world, both externally and internally, and they spark inspiration for my research.

Quotes:
“If anything is worth doing, do it with all your heart.”
“Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted really counts.”
“Live in the Present Moment. Irrespective of what happened yesterday or last year, and what may or may not happen tomorrow, the present moment is where you are—always.”

Archived Highlights

• 03/2025: I am happy to announce that my PhD thesis, titled Safe, Efficient, and Socially Compliant Automated Driving in Mixed Traffic: Sensing, Anomaly Detection, Planning and Control, has been published online as open access at https://doi.org/10.4233/uuid:12a9aff5-0cb6-46ab-a2d1-ae927d564913.
• 03/2025: Need your help! One of the Master’s students I am supervising is conducting a research survey about socially compliant automated vehicles at https://forms.gle/2k95HG4LXdkuPwiv8. It would be helpful if you could spend 15-25 minutes filling out the survey. Please refer to the link for more details.
• 12/2024: I am delighted to announce that after four years of intermittent learning through high-quality courses and participating in the TRAIL Research School events, I have finally obtained the TRAIL Research School Diploma-Certificate of Education.
• 09/2024: On September 24, our 2nd edition of the amazing workshop on “Automated Mobility in Emerging Mixed Traffic” was successfully hosted at Salon 5 during the IEEE ITSC 2024 in Edmonton, Canada. It is a great honor to have keynote talks from Maria Laura Delle Monache, Dan Work, Cathy Wu, and Lina Kattan, followed by very insightful panel discussions. With encouragement and very positive feedback, we are excited to announce that we plan to hold the 3rd edition of this workshop next year at ITSC2025. Look forward to seeing you in November 2025 in Gold Coast, Australia, during ITSC 2025. Please stay updated through our workshop and interdisciplinary research committee websites (https://www.itsc2024.mixedtraffic.org/ and https://www.mixedtraffic.org/), as well as the mailing list at https://groups.google.com/g/emerging-mixed-traffic.
• 07/2024: Our workshop on “Automated Mobility in Emerging Mixed Traffic” has been approved to be held on September 24, 2024, in Edmonton, Canada, during the IEEE ITSC 2024. If you want to present relevant published or submitted high-quality journal papers, or share pertinent resources (e.g., datasets, simulations, and data analysis tools), please contact us by emailing yongqidong369@gmail.com to reserve a time slot. [Available slots are very limited.]
• 07/2024: Our paper titled eHMI on the Vehicle or on the Infrastructure? A Driving Simulator Study is accepted and published in the European Journal of Transport and Infrastructure Research. DOI: ejtir.2024.24.2.7273. Another paper titled Towards Understanding Worldwide Cross-cultural Differences in Implicit Driving Cues: Review, Comparative Analysis, and Research Roadmap is accepted by the 2024 IEEE 27th International Conference on Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITSC).
• 06/2024: Cooperating with researchers from UC Berkeley, Tsinghua University, Tongji University, and the University of Calgary, we are preparing a workshop on “Automated Mobility in Emerging Mixed Traffic” to be held on September 24, 2024, in Edmonton, Canada, in conjunction with the 27th IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Transportation Systems (IEEE ITSC 2024). The workshop will combine research work presentations with interactive sessions of panel discussion and hands-on tutorial. There are already three confirmed speakers from MIT, UC Berkeley, and Tongji University.
• 05/2024: Two papers have been submitted and are currently under review by the 27th IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Transportation Systems (IEEE ITSC 2024): Leverage Multi-source Traffic Demand Data Fusion with Transformer Model for Urban Parking Prediction, and Towards Understanding Worldwide Cross-cultural Differences in Implicit Driving Cues: Review, Comparative Analysis, and Research Roadmap.
• 03/2024: My 2024 IEEE ITSS New Initiatives Proposal on “Promoting interdisciplinary research towards the deployment of automated vehicles in mixed traffic” has been approved! This initiative will foster interdisciplinary research and build a vibrant community focused on advancing automated mobility in the mixed-traffic environment. If you are in the relevant research/working domain, feel free to join our online group at https://groups.google.com/g/emerging-mixed-traffic. In line with this, we will propose a follow-up ITSC workshop, expanding on the groundwork laid by last year’s iteration, accessible at https://sites.google.com/view/itsc2023-mixed-traffic. Let’s drive innovation together!
• 12/2023: On December 18, I attended the 2023 International Forum of Young Scientists (Scholars) - Sub-Forum for Sci&Tech Driven Business Interdisciplinary Research at East China Normal University, and gave a talk titled Grand Unified Internet of Everything—A Perspective from Automated Driving in Intelligent Transportation System. I shared my perspectives regarding how to enhance safe, efficient, socially compliant automated driving in mixed traffic through automation, connectivity, and artificial intelligence.
• 12/2023: I attended the 27th International Conference of Hong Kong Society for Transportation Studies. I enjoyed the keynote speech, the oral/poster presentation, and especially the opportunity to connect with top researchers around the world. I presented my research paper Social-aware Planning and Control for Automated Vehicles based on Driving Risk Field and Model Predictive Contouring Control: Driving through Roundabouts as a Case Study (Demo video) on December 12 (13:30-14:50 in Session E4: Emerging and Future Mobility-5), and promoted the relevant IEEE TAB Committee on Standards Seed Funding project R11P21 Enhancing the Deployment of Socially Compliant Automated Vehicles in Mixed Traffic. If you are around and interested in relevant research domains, feel free to drop by and have a light discussion. We are recruiting members for the dedicated research community (https://groups.google.com/g/emerging-mixed-traffic). If you have any questions, please contact me by emailing yongqidong369@gmail.com.
• 11/2023: I attended the 2023 WiE-ITS & YP-ITS Fellowship Program (November 20-22, 2023), presenting my developed online Resource Repository: Datasets, Simulation Platforms, and Relevant Publications on Emerging Mixed Traffic of Automated Vehicles and Human-driven Vehicles, and having a great time networking with other fellows and invited speakers. My project will be constantly updated. If you are in a relevant research domain and want to contribute to this open repository, or want to join the dedicated research community (https://groups.google.com/g/emerging-mixed-traffic), please contact me by emailing yongqidong369@gmail.com.
• 10/2023: I attended and presented two research papers, i.e., Social-aware Planning and Control for Automated Vehicles based on Driving Risk Field and Model Predictive Contouring Control: Driving through Roundabouts as a Case Study (Demo video, and Comparative Study on Semi-supervised Learning Applied for Anomaly Detection in Hydraulic Condition Monitoring System at the 2023 IEEE Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics (October 1-4, 2023) in Honolulu, Hawaii.
• 09/2023: As part of the 2023 WiE-ITS & YP-ITS Fellowship Program, I developed an online Resource Repository: Datasets, Simulation Platforms, and Relevant Publications on Emerging Mixed Traffic of Automated Vehicles and Human-driven Vehicles. It will be constantly updated. If you are in a relevant research domain and want to contribute to this open repository, please contact me by emailing yongqidong369@gmail.com.
• 08/2023: I got awarded the IEEE SMC Conference Grant. It will support my participation in the 2023 IEEE Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics (October 1-4, 2023) in Honolulu, Hawaii. I will present two research papers there, i.e., Social-aware Planning and Control for Automated Vehicles based on Driving Risk Field and Model Predictive Contouring Control: Driving through Roundabouts as a Case Study (Demo video), and Comparative Study on Semi-supervised Learning Applied for Anomaly Detection in Hydraulic Condition Monitoring System.
• 08/2023: One paper, “Robust Lane Detection through Self Pre-training with Masked Sequential Autoencoders and Fine-tuning with Customized PolyLoss”, was accepted by the Journal of IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems. Preprint is available.
• 07/2023: As the (co-)first author and/or the corresponding author, I got four papers accepted by the 26th IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITSC 2023). Super happy~
• 07/2023: I attended the 2023 TRB Annual Automated Road Transportation Symposium (TRB ARTS23), July 9-13, 2023, in San Francisco. During the reception and poster session on July 11, I presented our work titled “Social-aware Planning and Control for Automated Vehicles Based on Driving Risk Field and Model Predictive Contouring Control: Driving through Roundabouts as a Case Study”.
• 07/2023: I attended the International Task Force on Vehicle-Highway Automation (ITFVHA) Symposium on 8 July 2023 in San Francisco and tried the Cruise Robotaxi for a 20-minute trip. It was really a fantastic experience.
• 06/2023: I got two papers accepted by the 2023 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics (SMC 2023): Social-aware Planning and Control for Automated Vehicles based on Driving Risk Field and Model Predictive Contouring Control: Driving through Roundabouts as a Case Study (Demo video), and Comparative Study on Semi-supervised Learning Applied for Anomaly Detection in Hydraulic Condition Monitoring System.
• 06/2023: I attended the IEEE Intelligent Vehicles Symposium (IV 2023) (4-7 June 2023 in Anchorage, Alaska), and successfully hosted the workshop “Development of Socially-compliant Driving Behaviour for Automated Vehicles to Enhance Safety and Efficiency in Mixed Traffic”. There was a cozy and fruitful round discussion. Follow-ups and relevant updates will be posted and a white paper might be open-sourced after our ITSC 2023 workshop “Data-driven and Empirical Research for Emerging Mixed Traffic of Automated Vehicles and Human-driven Vehicles”.
• 05/2023: On May 15th, I started my research visit as a visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley. Curious to explore and willing to initiate cooperation.
• 05/2023: I received the TU Delft-Transport Institute Interdisciplinary Research Grant (10,500 €). It will support my research visit to the University of California, Berkeley.
• 03/2023: Cooperating with researchers from Tsinghua University, Tongji University, University of Minnesota, University of Hong Kong (HKU), and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou), our workshop proposal “Data-driven and Empirical Research for Emerging Mixed Traffic of Automated Vehicles and Human-driven Vehicles” had been accepted by the 26th IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITSC 2023). The confirmed speakers are from MIT, UC Berkeley, ETH Zürich, EPFL, IC London, CTH, Univ. of Memphis, and Motional Inc. The workshop will combine presentation and interactive sessions. See you on 24 September 2023 in Bilbao, Spain. Workshop website and Call-for-Papers are available through this link.
• 01/2023: I attended and presented three papers at the Transportation Research Board (TRB) 102nd annual meeting (TRB 2023) in Washington, D.C. The posters of the three papers, i.e., Sequential Neural Network Model with Spatial-Temporal Attention Mechanism for Robust Lane Detection Using Multi Continuous Image Frames, Robust Lane Detection through Self Pre-training with Masked Sequential Autoencoders and Fine-tuning with Customized PolyLoss (preprint will be released soon), and Optimization of coordinated flow restriction and skip-stopping schemes for urban rail stations considering platform carrying capacity are available online through TRB portal and TU Delft research repository, and can be found easily at my google scholar page.
• 12/2022: Our group is conducting a survey about developing socially compliant automated vehicles in mixed traffic, which can be accessed through this link. Every successfully filled questionnaire will result in a donation of 5 euros to the United Nations Road Safety Fund. Experts in Automated Vehicles and related topics are highly welcome to participate.
• 11/2022: Our workshop proposal “Development of Socially-compliant Driving Behaviour for Automated Vehicles to Enhance Safety and Efficiency in Mixed Traffic” had been accepted by the IEEE Intelligent Vehicles Symposium (IV 2023). See you on 4 June 2023 in Anchorage, Alaska! Workshop website and Call-for-Papers are available through this link.
• 11/2022: I will present our paper titled Towards Developing Socially-Compliant Automated Vehicles: State of the Practice, Experts Expectations, and a Conceptual Framework on the 4th Symposium on Management of Future Motorway and Urban Traffic Systems 2022 (MFTS2022), which will take place from 30 November to 2 December 2022 in Dresden, Germany.
• 11/2022: I received the Erasmus+ mobility Grant for the second time.
• 10/2022: I presented our paper Comparative Study on Supervised versus Semi-supervised Machine Learning for Anomaly Detection of In-vehicle CAN Network at ITSC 2022. Check the recorded Video.
• 09/2022: I received the IEEE ITSS Young Professionals Travelling Fellowship. I will present the topic Multi-goal Proactive Traffic Management for Mixed Traffic of Automated Vehicles and Human-driven Vehicles on 25 November 2022, in Chania, Greece.
• 09/2022: I attended the TRAIL Ph.D. Congress 2022 and presented my work there.
• 09/2022: Our paper Aspects to Consider for Modeling Automated Driving in Microscopic Traffic Simulations: State of the Practice and Research Needs is published in the journal of IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems.
• 02/2022: My paper A Hybrid Spatial-temporal Deep Learning Architecture for Lane Detection is published in the journal of Computer-Aided Civil and Infrastructure Engineering, demo videos are available at {Video1} and {Video2}.