Yuezhan Tao

I'm a fifth-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

Research

My research focuses on active perception. I build autonomous robotic systems for exploration, mapping, and navigation using onboard sensing and computation. My work closes the perception–action loop through the tight coupling of mapping and motion planning. I leverage both learning-based and classical model-based methods.

Publication & Preprint

	HALO: High-Altitude Language-Conditioned Monocular Aerial Exploration and Navigation Yuezhan Tao, Dexter Ong, Fernando Cladera, Jason Hughes, Camillo J Taylor, Pratik Chaudhari, Vijay Kumar preprint Project page
	ATLAS Navigator: Active Task-driven LAnguage-embedded Gaussian Splatting Dexter Ong, Yuezhan Tao, Varun Murali, Igor Spasojevic, Vijay Kumar, Pratik Chaudhari preprint Project page
	RT-GuIDE: Real-Time Gaussian Splatting for Information-Driven Exploration Yuezhan Tao, Dexter Ong, Varun Murali, Igor Spasojevic, Pratik Chaudhari, Vijay Kumar RA-L 2025 arXiv / Project page / Code
	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. Sukhatme, Vijay Kumar, Lifeng Zhou MRS 2025 (Accepted)
	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 T-RO 2025 (Accepted)* Project page / Code
	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 ICRA 2025* arXiv / Project page / Code / Data
	Safe Interval Motion Planning for Quadrotors in Dynamic Environments Songhao Huang, Yuwei Wu, Yuezhan Tao, Vijay Kumar ICRA 2025 arXiv
	An Active Perception Game for Robust Information Gathering Siming He, Yuezhan Tao, Igor Spasojevic, Vijay Kumar, Pratik Chaudhari ICRA 2025 arXiv
	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
	Trajectory Optimization with Global Yaw Parameterization for Field-of-View Constrained Autonomous Flight Yuwei Wu, Yuezhan Tao, Igor Spasojevic, Vijay Kumar IROS 2024 arXiv
	3D Active Metric-Semantic SLAM Yuezhan Tao, Xu Liu, Igor Spasojevic, Saurav Agarwa, Vijay Kumar RA-L 2024 arXiv / Project page / 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

Gaussian Splatting as a Unified Representation for Autonomy in Unstructured Environments
Dexter Ong, Yuezhan Tao, Varun Murali, Igor Spasojevic, Vijay Kumar, Pratik Chaudhari
ICRA 2025 Workshop on Field Robotics
Project page

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)
IEEE International Symposium on Multi-Robot & Multi-Agent Systems (MRS)
Robotics and Autonomous Systems
Neurocomputing

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