🧍‍♂️ About Me

I am a Ph.D. student in the Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering at Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech), co-advised by Prof. Jiankun Wang and Prof. Hong Zhang. My research focuses on robotics, specifically planning, control, and reinforcement learning for robot person following (RPF). My long-term goal is to develop a socially-aware RPF system that adheres to social norms while demonstrating robust assistive intelligence.

Previously, I served as a research and teaching assistant at the Shenzhen Key Laboratory of Robotic Perception and Intelligence, SUSTech (2025), working with Prof. Jiankun Wang and Prof. Max Q.-H. Meng. Earlier in 2024, I was a research assistant at the Quanzhou Institute of Equipment Manufacturing, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), working with Prof. Houde Dai.

I obtained my B.Eng. in Automation from Huaqiao University in 2020. That same year, I was admitted via merit-based exemption to the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences (UCAS), where I pursued graduate studies at the Fujian Institute of Research on the Structure of Matter, CAS. I received my M.Eng. in Control Engineering in 2023.

🔥 News

• 2026.01:   🥳🥳 Adap-RPF and EZREAL are accepted by ICRA 2026.
• 2025.10:   Check out our latest work, “Adap-RPF: Adaptive Trajectory Sampling for Robot Person Following in Dynamic Crowded Environments.”
• 2025.09:   Check out our recent work, “Follow-Bench: A Unified Motion Planning Benchmark for Socially-Aware Robot Person Following.”
• 2025.09:   Check out our recent work, “EZREAL: Enhancing Zero-Shot Outdoor Robot Navigation toward Distant Targets under Varying Visibility.”
• 2025.07:   Check out our recent work, “LSTP-Nav: Lightweight Spatiotemporal Policy for Map-free Multi-agent Navigation with LiDAR.”
• 2025.01:   Exciting Update! This Fall I begin my PhD in Robotics at SUSTech, co-advised by two amazing mentors: Professor Jiankun Wang and Chair Professor Hong Zhang.
• 2024.05:   Presenting our work at ICRA 2024 in Yokohama, Japan. My first oral presentation in my academic career 🎉
• 2024.02:   One paper is accepted by ICRA 2024.

📝 Research

Full publication list is available on google scholar.

👣 Robot Person Following

🧭 Navigation

LSTP-Nav: Lightweight Spatiotemporal Policy for Map-free Multi-agent Navigation with LiDAR

Xingrong Diao, Zhirui Sun, Jianwei Peng, Jiankun Wang

Under Review

[arXiv] [site]

🎖 Honors and Awards

• 2024.08   Best Prototype Award in the Technology Category at the 2024 International Convention on Rehabilitation Engineering and Assistive Technology (i-CREATe 2024).
• 2023.08   Best Conference Paper Finalist at the Eighth International Conference on Cognitive Systems and Information Processing (ICCSIP 2023).
• 2022.12   Future Talent Support Program of the Shanghai Branch of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
• 2022.11   National Scholarship.
• 2022.11   Third Prize in the Artificial Intelligence Category at the First Staff Skills Competition of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
• 2021.09   Lu Jiaxi Outstanding Freshmen Scholarship.
• 2021.08   First Prize in the 2021 Outstanding University Student Entrepreneurial Teams Selection for Beijing Universities.
• 2020.11   First Prize at the 9th University Science and Technology Achievements Exhibition and Promotion Conference.
• 2020.09   Grand Prize in the Intelligent Robotics Competition of the 2020 Digital China Innovation Contest.
• 2020.07   Outstanding Graduates of Huaqiao University Class of 2020.
• 2018.11   National Second Prize of 2018 China University Student Mathematical Modelling Competition.
• 2017~2019   First-class Undergraduate Academic Scholarship at Huaqiao University.

💬 Academic Services

• Journal Reviewer:

  • IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RAL)
  • IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics (TMECH)
  • IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics (TSMC)
  • Robotics and Autonomous Systems (RAS)

• Conference Reviewer:

  • IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA)
  • IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS)
  • IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Biomimetics (ROBIO)
  • IEEE International Conference on Information Automation (ICIA)
  • International Conference on Biomimetic Intelligence and Robotics (ICBIR)
  • China Automation Conference (CAC)

📖 Educations

• 2025.08 - 2029.6 (expected), Ph.D. in Control Science and Engineering, Southern University of Science and Technology (Shenzhen, China).
• 2020.09 - 2023.06, M.Eng. in Control Engineering, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences (Beijing, China)
  • 2021.08 - 2023.06, Fujian Institute of Research on the Structure of Matter, CAS (Quanzhou, China)
• 2016.09 - 2020.06, B.Eng. in Automation, Huaqiao University (Xiamen, China)

💻 Work Experience

• 2025.04 - 2025.08, Research and Teaching Assistant, Southern University of Science and Technology
• 2023.07 - 2025.03, Research Assistant, Quanzhou Institute of Equipment Manufacturing, CAS
• 2019.10 - 2020.08, Intern, Quanzhou Institute of Equipment Manufacturing, CAS

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