Field Autonomous System & Computing Lab (FAST), Zhejiang University

Implemented a sum-of-squares trajectory optimization for quadrotors based on the application of safe flight corridors directly generated on point clouds.
Proposed a systematic (re)planning framework that considers estimated external forces on quadrotors. Developed an online nonlinear model predictive control with safe ellipsoid boundaries constrained in a safe flight corridor to enforce reliable obstacle avoidance.
Research on whole-body safe trajectory generation for autonomous vehicles in the urban traffic environment. The back-end optimization is based on a differential-flat system while encodes dynamic obstacles avoidance with surrounding vehicles.

Jul 2020 - Aug 2021
Huzhou, China

School of Engineering and Applied Science, University of Pennsylvania

Jul 2020 - May 2024
Philadelphia, PA

INFORMS Annual Meeting: Invited session on Intelligent and Safe Autonomy for Aerial Systems under the Air Transportation Section (ATS) track. website 2025

IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS): Workshop on Tightly Coupled Physical Interaction and Collaboration in Multi-Robot Systems. 2026
Robotics: Science and Systems (RSS): 1st Workshop on Leveraging Implicit Methods for Aerial Autonomy. website 2025

Robotics: Science and Systems (RSS)2025 -
IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS)2024 -
IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA)2023 -

Gave a talk on “Flying Robot Swarms” at Roxborough Library Apr 2025
Gave a talk on “How robots find their way” at Roxborough Library’s Fun With Robots program Apr 2024
Judge for VEX Robotics Competition Feb 2020
Assistant referee in 2nd World Robot Conference Aug 2018

Yichen (James) Zhao (Gatech)
Kota Kondo (MIT), with Prof. Jonathan P How (MIT)
Xiaofan Yu (UC Merced) and Ye Tian (UCSD), with Prof. Tajana Šimunić Rosing (UCSD)
Guangyao Shi and Zhehui Huang, with Prof. Gaurav Sukhatme (USC)
Peihan Li, with Prof. Lifeng Zhou (Drexel University)
Jiazhen Liu (Gatech)

Jinyuan Zhang, ROBO MSE(2025 - 2026)
Songhao Huang, MEAM MSE(2023 - 2025) → Ph.D, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Xiatao Sun, ROBO MSE(2022- 2023) → Ph.D, Yale University

I am passionate about open sourcing to benefit the robotics community. See my GitHub profile for the complete list of repositories.

SIMP: A safe interval motion planning framework for quadrotors with dynamic moving obstacles.
AllocNet: A lightweight learning-based trajectory optimization framework (ROS 1).
forces_resilient_planner: A systematic framework for local planning under external disturbance (ROS 1).

kr_opt_sfc: A tool for finding an optimal convex cover to approximate collision-free space.

SPAR: Automatically generates valid, diverse, and semantically accurate PDDL domains from natural language for single- and multi-UAV missions.
kr_mp_design: Guidance for designing and evaluating quadrotor motion planners with varying complexity.
kr_param_map: A parameterized map generator for planning evaluation and benchmarking (ROS 1 and ROS 2 compatible).

SEER: Safe Efficient Exploration for Aerial Robots using Learning to Predict Information Gain.
drl_lc_exploration: Multi-agent cooperative exploration in sparse landmark-complex environments.
DZone_Tracking: A risk-aware multi-agent target-tracking framework with sensing and communication danger zones.
resilient-target-tracking: A resilient and adaptive multi-robot target-tracking framework with sensing and communication danger zones.
hierarchical-llms: A hierarchical LLM framework for real-time multi-robot task allocation and target tracking under unknown hazards.