Publications

Notation * indicates equal contributions.

Learning Versatile Humanoid Manipulation with Touch Dreaming

Yaru Niu, Zhenlong Fang, Binghong Chen, Shuai Zhou, Revanth Senthilkumaran, Hao Zhang, Bingqing Chen, Chen Qiu, H. Eric Tseng, Jonathan Francis, Ding Zhao

International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2026)
Whole-Body Control and Bimanual Manipulation Workshop (RSS 2026), Oral Presentation

pdf code webpage video x summary techxplore ieee spectrum
Learning Human-Robot Collaboration via Heterogeneous-Agent Lyapunov Policy Optimization

Hao Zhang, Yaru Niu, Yikai Wang, Ding Zhao, H. Eric Tseng

International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML 2026), Oral (top 0.7%)

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Dexterous manipulation policies from rgb human videos via 3d hand-object trajectory reconstruction

Hongyi Chen, Tony Dong, Tiancheng Wu, Liquan Wang, Yash Jangir, Yaru Niu, Yufei Ye, Homanga Bharadhwaj, Zackory Erickson, Jeffrey Ichnowski

arXiv preprint, 2026

pdf webpage

Learning to Interact in World Latent for Team Coordination

Dongsu Lee, Daehee Lee, Yaru Niu, Honguk Woo, Amy Zhang, Ding Zhao

arXiv preprint, 2025
ARLET Workshop (NeurIPS 2025), Oral Presentation

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Human2LocoMan: Learning Versatile Quadrupedal Manipulation with Human Pretraining

Yaru Niu*, Yunzhe Zhang*, Mingyang Yu, Changyi Lin, Chenhao Li, Yikai Wang, Yuxiang Yang, Wenhao Yu, Tingnan Zhang, Zhenzhen Li, Jonathan Francis, Bingqing Chen, Jie Tan, Ding Zhao

Robotics: Science and Systems (RSS 2025)

pdf code webpage talk 中文讲解 video x summary cmu engineering ieee spectrum
Learning Multi-Agent Loco-Manipulation for Long-Horizon Quadrupedal Pushing

Yuming Feng*, Chuye Hong*, Yaru Niu*, Shiqi Liu, Yuxiang Yang, Wenhao Yu, Tingnan Zhang, Jie Tan, Ding Zhao

International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA 2025)

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QuietPaw: Learning Quadrupedal Locomotion with Versatile Noise Preference Alignment

Yuyou Zhang, Yihang Yao, Shiqi Liu, Yaru Niu, Changyi Lin, Yuxiang Yang, Wenhao Yu, Tingnan Zhang, Jie Tan, Ding Zhao

International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2025)

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The RoboDrive Challenge: Drive Anytime Anywhere in Any Condition

Lingdong Kong, Shaoyuan Xie, Hanjiang Hu, Yaru Niu, et al.

arXiv preprint, 2024

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LocoMan: Advancing Versatile Quadrupedal Dexterity with Lightweight Loco-Manipulators

Changyi Lin, Xingyu Liu, Yuxiang Yang, Yaru Niu, Wenhao Yu, Tingnan Zhang, Jie Tan, Byron Boots, Ding Zhao

International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2024)
Future Roadmap for Manipulation Skills Workshop (ICRA 2024), Spotlight

pdf code webpage x summary techxplore cmu engineering ieee spectrum
COMPOSER: Scalable and Robust Modular Policies for Snake Robots

Yuyou Zhang, Yaru Niu, Xingyu Liu, Ding Zhao

International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA 2024)
Learning for Soft Robots Workshop (CoRL 2023), Spotlight

pdf webpage
Safety-aware Causal Representation for Trustworthy Reinforcement Learning in Autonomous Driving

Haohong Lin, Wenhao Ding, Zuxin Liu, Yaru Niu, Jiacheng Zhu, Yuming Niu, Ding Zhao

Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L 2024)

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Creative Robot Tool Use with Large Language Models

Mengdi Xu*, Peide Huang*, Wenhao Yu*, Shiqi Liu, Xilun Zhang, Yaru Niu, Tingnan Zhang, Fei Xia, Jie Tan, Ding Zhao

arXiv preprint, 2023
Language and Robot Learning Workshop (CoRL 2023)

pdf poster webpage x summary techxplore ml@cmu cmu engineering
GOATS: Goal Sampling Adaptation for Scooping with Curriculum Reinforcement Learning

Yaru Niu, Shiyu Jin*, Zeqing Zhang*, Jiacheng Zhu, Ding Zhao, Liangjun Zhang

International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2023)
Representing and Manipulating Deformable Objects Workshop (ICRA 2023), Spotlight Talk

pdf poster webpage talk video
Interpretable Reinforcement Learning for Robotics and Continuous Control

Rohan Paleja*, Letian Chen*, Yaru Niu*, Andrew Silva, Zhaoxin Li, Songan Zhang, Chace Ritchie, Sugju Choi, Kimberlee Chestnut Chang, Hongtei Eric Tseng, Yan Wang, Subramanya Nageshrao, Matthew Gombolay

arXiv preprint, 2023

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The RoboDepth Challenge: Methods and Advancements Towards Robust Depth Estimation

Lingdong Kong, Yaru Niu, Shaoyuan Xie, Hanjiang Hu, et al.

arXiv preprint, 2023

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Group Distributionally Robust Reinforcement Learning with Hierarchical Latent Variables

Mengdi Xu, Peide Huang, Yaru Niu, Visak Kumar, Jielin Qiu, Chao Fang, Kuan-Hui Lee, Xuewei Qi, Henry Lam, Bo Li, Ding Zhao

International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Statistics (AISTATS 2023)

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Domain Knowledge Driven Pseudo Labels for Interpretable Goal-Conditioned Interactive Trajectory Prediction

Lingfeng Sun*, Chen Tang*, Yaru Niu, Enna Sachdeva, Chiho Choi, Teruhisa Misu, Masayoshi Tomizuka, Wei Zhan

International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2022)

pdf slides talk
Adaptable and Scalable Multi-Agent Graph-Attention Communication

Yaru Niu
Committee: Matthew Gombolay, Ayanna Howard, Sonia Chernova

Master’s Thesis, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2022

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Learning Interpretable, High-Performing Policies for Autonomous Driving

Rohan Paleja*, Yaru Niu*, Andrew Silva, Chace Ritchie, Sugju Choi, Matthew Gombolay

Robotics: Science and Systems (RSS 2022)

pdf code poster talk

Multi-Agent Graph-Attention Communication and Teaming

Yaru Niu*, Rohan Paleja*, Matthew Gombolay

International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS 2021), Oral
MAIR2 Workshop (ICCV 2021), Best Paper Award

pdf code talk

Real-Time Whole-Body Imitation by Humanoid Robots and Task-Oriented Teleoperation using an Analytical Mapping Method and Quantitative Evaluation

Zhijun Zhang*, Yaru Niu*, Ziyi Yan, Shuyang Lin

Applied Sciences, 2018

pdf code video