Meet Assistant Professor Yifan Zhu
Meet Assistant Professor Yifan Zhu
Assistant Professor Yifan Zhu joined the computer science faculty this fall. His research area is robotics, and lies at the intersection of physics modeling, optimization, machine learning, and hardware design.
Zhu earned his bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering with a computer science minor from Vanderbilt University. He earned his PhD at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and completed a postdoc at Yale University before joining UIC.
Zhu has always been interested in robots and is researching ways to allow them to familiarize themselves with new environments on their own, so that they can understand the physical world around them.
Robots are typically trained to understand the specific environment where they operate. When a robot is placed in a new environment, it can get stuck and crash, failing miserably to complete tasks. Zhu is developing fundamental technologies that will allow robots to proactively explore and interact with their new environments, using physics modeling and machine learning for predictive world modeling.
Zhu explores the types of representations or models that robots can use to understand their world.. This includes using algorithms and the probabilistic understanding of an environment, including uncertainty, so the robot can collect samples and establish a model of the new environment. Once the robot can predict how its new world works, it must be able to execute previously acquired skills and also learn new skills from people.
“I think the bigger part here is interaction and contact,” Zhu said. “I’m more interested in how robots can integrate visual and tactile sensing to identify the environment, and then perform useful tasks.”
Zhu’s previous work with robotics has included manipulation research in lab settings, but also robots used in nursing and for construction tasks, such as digging and excavating, and scientific sampling that he completed in collaboration with NASA during his doctoral studies.
Zhu is working to set up his lab in SELW and will also conduct research in the CDRLC’s new robotics lab.