Cheng Wang

I am currently an assistant professor at the Robotics Group, Heriot-Watt University, affiliated with the National Robotarium and the Edinburgh Center for Robotics. I am also the Deputy Director of the CDT-D2AIR and a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow. Prior to that, I was a research associate at the Autonomous Agents Research Group, University of Edinburgh, working with Assoc. Prof. Stefano Albrecht. I obtained my Ph.D. at the Institute of Automotive Engineering, Technical University of Darmstadt, supervised by Prof. Hermann Winner. After my Ph.D., I joined DJI Automotive as a senior engineer, working with Assoc. Prof. Yuxin Zhang.

I am leading the RoboSafe lab, where the lab’s vision is to design and deploy safe and trustworthy robotics to benefit human beings and society. My research interests are AI safety, safety assurance of autonomous vehicles, scenario-based testing and world models, driver behavior modeling, and explainable AI.

I am recruiting PhD students under the SPADS CDT and the CDT-D2AIR and also welcome undergraduate and masters students for internships. Drop me a message if you are interested. We currently recruit a postdoctoral researcher in robotics and AI.

news

Nov 07, 2026	Welcome to our three new PhD students, Yuanru Yang, Qingliu Meng and Pengcheng Xin, who join the RoboSafe lab to work on world models for testing and benchmarking autonomous vehicles!
Jan 01, 2026	I joined the IEEE Open Journal of Intelligent Transportation Systems (2026–2028) and IEEE ERAS as an Associate Editor.
Nov 10, 2025	Our paper about pedestrain trajectory prediction has been accepted by IEEE Transaction on Intelligent Transportation Systems
Nov 01, 2025	Our Paper about human-vehicle integration has been accepted by IEEE Transaction on Human-machine Systems.
Nov 01, 2025	Our paper about HAD-Gen for controllable, realistic and diverse scenario generation has been accepted by Accident Analysis and Prevention.
Nov 01, 2025	I was awarded the DAAD Scholarship and will visit University of Bremen for 3 months!
Jul 18, 2025	We got four paper accepted by IEEE ITSC 2025!
May 16, 2025	Our paper about technical pipeline for creating drone-based datasets was accepted by IEEE Transation on Intelligent Transportation System.
Apr 16, 2025	Our paper about safey requirement decomposition and quantification was accepted by IEEE Transation on Intelligent Transportation System.
Mar 01, 2025	I became Deputy Director of the Centre for Doctoral Training in Dependable and Deployable AI for Robotics (CDT-D2AIR).
Oct 01, 2024	Our paper about XAI for Autonomous Driving was accepted by IEEE Transation on Intelligent Transportation System.
Sep 21, 2024	I was named a finalist for the “Rising Star of the Year Award” from The Institution of Engineering and Technology.
Jul 06, 2024	Our paper about “Safety Assessment for Autonomous Vehicles: A Reference Driver Model for Highway Merging Scenarios” is accepted by Accident Analysis and Prevention.
Jun 22, 2024	Our paper about “FedPRM: Federated Personalized Mixture Representation for Driver Intention Prediction” is accepted by IEEE Transaction on Intelligent Vehicles.
Apr 02, 2024	I was awarded the “DAAD AInet Fellowship”.
Feb 12, 2024	I was awarded the “Marie Curie Postdoctotal Fellowship”.

selected publications

IEEE T-IV

FedPRM: Federated Personalized Mixture Representation for Driver Intention Prediction

Zhongpan Zhu , Shuaijie Zhao , Chuanchuan Chu , and 3 more authors

IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Vehicles, 2024

Bib HTML

@article{wang2023application,
  title = {FedPRM: Federated Personalized Mixture Representation for Driver Intention Prediction},
  author = {Zhu, Zhongpan and Zhao, Shuaijie and Chu, Chuanchuan and Wang*, Cheng and Du, Aimin and He, Bin},
  journal = {IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Vehicles},
  year = {2024},
  publisher = {IEEE},
}

AAP

Safety Assessment for Autonomous Vehicles: A Reference Driver Model for Highway Merging Scenarios

Cheng Wang , Fengwei Guo , Shuaijie Zhao , and 2 more authors

Accident Analysis & Prevention, 2024

Bib HTML

@article{wang2024runtime,
  title = {Safety Assessment for Autonomous Vehicles: A Reference Driver Model for Highway Merging Scenarios},
  author = {Wang, Cheng and Guo, Fengwei and Zhao, Shuaijie and Zhu, Zhongpan and Zhang, Yuxin},
  journal = {Accident Analysis \& Prevention},
  year = {2024},
  publisher = {Elsevier},
}

AAP

Runtime unknown unsafe scenarios identification for SOTIF of autonomous vehicles

Cheng Wang , Kai Storms , Ning Zhang , and 1 more author

Accident Analysis & Prevention, 2024

Bib HTML

@article{wang2024runtimf,
  title = {Runtime unknown unsafe scenarios identification for SOTIF of autonomous vehicles},
  author = {Wang, Cheng and Storms, Kai and Zhang, Ning and Winner, Hermann},
  journal = {Accident Analysis \& Prevention},
  volume = {195},
  pages = {107410},
  year = {2024},
  publisher = {Elsevier},
}

IEEE T-IV

The Application of Driver Models in the Safety Assessment of Autonomous Vehicles: Perspectives, Insights, Prospects

Cheng Wang , Fengwei Guo , Ruilin Yu , and 2 more authors

IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Vehicles, 2023

Bib HTML

@article{wang2023applicatioo,
  title = {The Application of Driver Models in the Safety Assessment of Autonomous Vehicles: Perspectives, Insights, Prospects},
  author = {Wang, Cheng and Guo, Fengwei and Yu, Ruilin and Wang, Luyao and Zhang, Yuxin},
  journal = {IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Vehicles},
  year = {2023},
  publisher = {IEEE},
}

IEEE T-IV

The AD4CHE Dataset and its Application in Typical Congestion Scenarios of Traffic Jam Pilot Systems

Yuxin Zhang , Cheng Wang* , Ruilin Yu , and 4 more authors

IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Vehicles, 2023

Bib HTML

@article{zhang2023ad4che,
  title = {The AD4CHE Dataset and its Application in Typical Congestion Scenarios of Traffic Jam Pilot Systems},
  author = {Zhang, Yuxin and Wang*, Cheng and Yu, Ruilin and Wang, Luyao and Quan, Wei and Gao, Yang and Li, Pengfei},
  journal = {IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Vehicles},
  year = {2023},
  publisher = {IEEE}
}

IEEE T-ITS

Online safety assessment of automated vehicles using silent testing

Cheng Wang , Kai Storms , and Hermann Winner

IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems, 2021

Bib HTML

@article{wang2021online,
  title = {Online safety assessment of automated vehicles using silent testing},
  author = {Wang, Cheng and Storms, Kai and Winner, Hermann},
  journal = {IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems},
  volume = {23},
  number = {8},
  pages = {13069--13083},
  year = {2021},
  publisher = {IEEE},
}

IEEE T-IV

Reduction of uncertainties for safety assessment of automated driving under parallel simulations

Cheng Wang , Fanglei Xiong , and Hermann Winner

IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Vehicles, 2020

Bib HTML

@article{wang2020reduction,
  title = {Reduction of uncertainties for safety assessment of automated driving under parallel simulations},
  author = {Wang, Cheng and Xiong, Fanglei and Winner, Hermann},
  journal = {IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Vehicles},
  volume = {6},
  number = {1},
  pages = {110--120},
  year = {2020},
  publisher = {IEEE},
}

IEEE T-ITS

Explainable AI for Safe and Trustworthy Autonomous Driving: A Systematic Review

Anton Kuznietsov , Balint Gyevnar , Cheng Wang* , and 2 more authors

IEEE Transaction on Intelligent Transportation Systems, 2024

Bib HTML

@article{kuznietsov2024explainable,
  title = {Explainable AI for Safe and Trustworthy Autonomous Driving: A Systematic Review},
  author = {Kuznietsov, Anton and Gyevnar, Balint and Wang*, Cheng and Peters, Steven and Albrecht, Stefano V},
  journal = {IEEE Transaction on Intelligent Transportation Systems},
  year = {2024},
  organization = {IEEE},
}

IEEE T-HMS

Automotive Cockpit-Driving Integration for Human-Centric Autonomous Driving: A Survey

Zhongpan Zhu , Shuaijie Zhao , Mobing Cai , and 2 more authors

IEEE Transactions on Human-Machine Systems, 2025

Bib HTML

@article{zhu2025automotive,
  title = {Automotive Cockpit-Driving Integration for Human-Centric Autonomous Driving: A Survey},
  author = {Zhu, Zhongpan and Zhao, Shuaijie and Cai, Mobing and Wang*, Cheng and Du, Aimin},
  journal = {IEEE Transactions on Human-Machine Systems},
  year = {2025},
  publisher = {IEEE},
}

AAP

HAD-Gen: Human-like and diverse driving behavior modeling for controllable scenario generation

Cheng Wang , Lingxin Kong , Massimiliano Tamborski , and 1 more author

Accident Analysis & Prevention, 2025

Bib HTML

@article{WANG2025108270,
  title = {HAD-Gen: Human-like and diverse driving behavior modeling for controllable scenario generation},
  journal = {Accident Analysis & Prevention},
  volume = {223},
  pages = {108270},
  year = {2025},
  author = {Wang, Cheng and Kong, Lingxin and Tamborski, Massimiliano and Albrecht, Stefano V.},
}

IEEE T-ITS

R-RNet: Probability-Driven Networks for Pedestrian Trajectory Prediction

Mingjun Ma , Zhongpan Zhu , Shuaijie Zhao , and 3 more authors

IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems, 2025

Bib HTML

@article{11249798,
  author = {Ma, Mingjun and Zhu, Zhongpan and Zhao, Shuaijie and Zhao, Rongfeng and Li, Xiuxian and Wang*, Cheng},
  journal = {IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems},
  title = {R-RNet: Probability-Driven Networks for Pedestrian Trajectory Prediction},
  year = {2025},
}