🧍♂️ 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
- 2026.02: 🥳🥳 One paper is accepted by RAL.
- 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.
- 2023.08: One paper is accepted by CAC 2023.
- 2023.06: One paper is accepted by IROS 2023.
📝 Research
Full publication list is available on google scholar.
👣 Robot Person Following
A Shopping Service Robot Framework with Visual-WEM Tracking and Intersection-Aware Following
Hanchen Yao, Jianwei Peng, Houde Dai, Fanbiao Li, Tim C Lueth
2026 IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RAL)
🧭 Navigation
🎖 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
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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)
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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