Yuezhan Tao

I'm a fourth-year Ph.D. student studying Computer and Information Science at the University of Pennsylvania. I work at the GRASP Lab with Dr. Vijay Kumar.

Previously, I completed my Master's degree in Computer and Information Science at the University of Pennsylvania. Before that, I received my Bachelor's degree with First Class Honors in Computer Science and Engineering from The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen.

I can be reached by yztao[at]seas.upenn.edu.

Google Scholar  /  Github  /  LinkedIn

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Research

I'm interested in Perception and Motion Planning for autonomous robot systems. I build robotic systems for active exploration and mapping leveraging onboard sensing and computation power.

Publication & Preprint

RT-GuIDE: Real-Time Gaussian Splatting for Information-Driven Exploration
Yuezhan Tao, Dexter Ong, Varun Murali, Igor Spasojevic, Pratik Chaudhari, Vijay Kumar
Submitted to ICRA 2025
Project page
Hierarchical LLMs In-the-loop Optimization for Real-time Multi-Robot Target Tracking under Unknown Hazards
Yuwei Wu, Yuezhan Tao, Peihan Li, Guangyao Shi, Gaurav S. Sukhatmem, Vijay Kumar, Lifeng Zhou
Submitted to ICRA 2025
Vision Transformers for End-to-End Vision-Based Quadrotor Obstacle Avoidance
Anish Bhattacharya*, Nishanth Rao*, Dhruv Parikh*, Pratik Kunapuli, Yuwei Wu, Yuezhan Tao, Nikolai Matni, Vijay Kumar
Submitted to ICRA 2025
Project page   /   Code   /   Data
Safe Interval Motion Planning for Quadrotors in Dynamic Environments
Songhao Huang*, Yuwei Wu*, Yuezhan Tao, Vijay Kumar
Submitted to ICRA 2025
An Active Perception Game for Robust Autonomous Exploration
Siming He, Yuezhan Tao, Igor Spasojevic, Vijay Kumar, Pratik Chaudhari
Submitted to ICRA 2025
Monocular Event-Based Vision for Dodging Static Obstacles with a Quadrotor
Anish Bhattacharya, Marco Cannici, Nishanth Rao, Yuezhan Tao, Vijay Kumar, Nikolai Matni, Davide Scaramuzza
CoRL 2024
Project page
SlideSLAM: Sparse, Lightweight, Decentralized Metric-Semantic SLAM for Multi-Robot Navigation
Xu Liu*, Jiuzhou Lei*, Ankit Prabhu*, Yuezhan Tao, Igor Spasojevic, Pratik Chaudhari, Nikolay Atanasov, Vijay Kumar
preprint
Project page   /   Code
Trajectory Optimization with Global Yaw Parameterization for Field-of-View Constrained Autonomous Flight
Yuwei Wu, Yuezhan Tao, Igor Spasojevic, Vijay Kumar
IROS 2024
3D Active Metric-Semantic SLAM
Yuezhan Tao*, Xu Liu*, Igor Spasojevic, Saurav Agarwa, Vijay Kumar
RA-L 2024
arXiv   /   Code
Learning to Explore Indoor Environments using Autonomous Micro Aerial Vehicles
Yuezhan Tao, Eran Iceland, Beiming Li, Elchanan Zwecher, Uri Heinemann, Avraham Cohen, Amir Avni, Oren Gal, Ariel Barel, Vijay Kumar
ICRA 2024
arXiv
SEER: Safe Efficient Exploration for Aerial Robots using Learning to Predict Information Gain
Yuezhan Tao, Yuwei Wu, Beiming Li, Fernando Cladera, Alex Zhou, Dinesh Thakur, Vijay Kumar
ICRA 2023
arXiv   /   Code
Large-Scale Autonomous Flight With Real-Time Semantic SLAM Under Dense Forest Canopy
Xu Liu*, Guilherme V Nardari*, Fernando Cladera Ojeda, Yuezhan Tao, Alex Zhou, Thomas Donnelly, Chao Qu, Steven W Chen, Roseli AF Romero, Camillo J Taylor, Vijay Kumar
RA-L 2022
arXiv   /   Code
Experiments in Adaptive Replanning for Fast Autonomous Flight in Forests
Laura Jarin-Lipschitz, Xu Liu, Yuezhan Tao, Vijay Kumar
ICRA 2022
arXiv
Swarm of Inexpensive Heterogeneous Micro Aerial Vehicles
Dinesh Thakur, Yuezhan Tao, Rebecca Li, Alex Zhou, Alex Kushleyev, Vijay Kumar
ISER 2020
Code

Workshop Paper

Open Source Tools for Deployment of GPS-Denied Autonomous UAVs in Real-World Application
Fernando Cladera*, Yuwei Wu*, Xu Liu, Yuezhan Tao, Ian D Miller, CJ Taylor, Vijay Kumar,
ICRA 2023 Workshop Lab-to-Real Gap
Code

Teaching

Teaching Assistant, CIS-5050 Software Systems, University of Pennsylvania
Fall 2022

Teaching Assistant, MEAM-620 Advanced Robotics, University of Pennsylvania
Spring 2022

Teaching Assistant, CIT-520 Introduction to Robotics, University of Pennsylvania
Spring 2021; Summer 2021

Undergraduate Student Teaching Fellow, CSC-3050 Computer Architecture, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen
Fall 2018

Academic Service

Reviewer:
IEEE Transactions on Robotics (T-RO)
IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L)
IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA)
IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS)
IEEE Transactions on Cognitive and Developmental Systems (TCDS)
Neurocomputing


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