Rui Li

Dr. Rui Li is the Founder and CEO of ViTai Robotics, a pioneering robotics company advancing vision-based tactile sensing and dexterous manipulation technologies for next-generation robotics. He received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT, where he conducted research at CSAIL under Professor Edward Adelson. Dr. Li is widely recognized as a pioneer and inventor in vision-based tactile sensing (VBTS). He co-invented the first vision-based tactile sensor, known as fingertip GelSight sensor, with spatial resolution exceeding that of the human fingertip, setting a new benchmark for robotic touch sensing.

His work helped establish vision-based tactile sensing as a new paradigm in robotics, opening a major research direction in high-resolution contact perception and dexterous manipulation.

He has published influential papers at leading venues including CVPR, ICRA, and IROS. His foundational research has inspired extensive follow-on work at top institutions such as MIT, Stanford, UC Berkeley, CMU, Tsinghua University, and Peking University, helping shape vision-based tactile sensing into a major area of modern robotic perception.

Before founding ViTai Robotics, Dr. Li also founded a Y Combinator-backed autonomous driving startup in Silicon Valley and received multiple honors for innovation and entrepreneurship. He is now focused on bringing breakthrough tactile sensing and hand-eye coordination technologies from research to real-world deployment.