I am a Researcher at Shanghai AI Laboratory, working on AI-driven embodied agents and decision-making systems, directed by Professor Xuelong Li. I completed my PhD in Computer Science at the State University of New York (SUNY), Binghamton, in February 2024. I supported by grants from the Ford Motor Company. I also got the Academic Excellence in Computer Science (PhD) at Binghamton University. I was supervised by Professor Chao Chen, during my master's program. I received my M.S. in Computer Science in 2019, and got my B.S. in Mechanical Engineering in 2016 from Chongqing University, China. The master's thesis, awarded the Outstanding Thesis of Chongqing City, is available via this Link.
I am seeking interns for Embodied AI and Robotics! Feel free to contact me at yding25@binghamton.edu.
Research Direction
The current research interests include:
Spatial Intelligence for Robotics: Empowering Robots to Understand the Real World
Skill Learning for Robotics: Enabling Robots to Transform the Real World
with a particular emphasis on their applications in the context of mobile manipulators (MoMa).
Robotic Tool
My team has several robots, including five robotic arms and two mobile manipulators. Therefore, we are developing an open-source robotic tool called BestMan. This tool supports development both in simulation and on real machines. By using a unified framework, BestMan facilitates rapid development, helping researchers save significant time. (Note: BestMan is still under construction.)
This project encompasses various sub-projects (selected):
Mobile manipulators always need to determine
feasible base positions prior to carrying
out navigation-manipulation tasks.
Real-world environments are often cluttered
with various furniture, obstacles, and
dozens of other objects. Efficiently
computing base positions poses a challenge.
In this work, we introduce a framework named
MoMa-Pos to address this issue.
LLM-GROP is a method that uses prompting to
extract commonsense knowledge about object
configurations from a large language model
and instantiates them with a task and motion
planner, allowing for successful and
efficient multi-object rearrangement in
various environments using a mobile
manipulator.
In this research, we propose ORLA*, which
leverages delayed (lazy) evaluation in
searching for a high-quality object pick and
place sequence that considers both
end-effector and mobile robot base
travel.
The paper introduces a new algorithm (COWP)
that uses task-oriented common sense
extracted from Large Language Models to help
robots handle unforeseen situations and
complete complex tasks in an open world,
with better success rates than previous
algorithms.
The paper presents a new robot planning
algorithm, TMOC, which can handle complex
real-world scenarios without prior knowledge
of object properties by learning them
through a physics engine, outperforming
existing algorithms.
Autonomous vehicles need to balance
efficiency and safety when planning tasks
and motions, and the algorithm Task-Motion
Planning for Urban Driving (TMPUD) enables
communication between planners for optimal
performance.
DAVT proposes a mobile edge computing
solution for vehicle trajectory data
compression, which reduces data at the
source and lowers communication and storage
costs, using three compressors for distance,
acceleration, velocity, and time data parts,
and outperforms other baselines according to
evaluation results.
This paper proposes an online trajectory
compression framework that uses SD-Matching
for GPS alignment and HCC for compression,
and demonstrates its effectiveness and
efficiency using real-world datasets in
Beijing and deployment in Chongqing.
This paper presents an online trajectory
compression framework for reducing storage,
communication, and computation issues caused
by massive and redundant vehicle trajectory
data, consisting of two phases: online
trajectory mapping and trajectory
compression, using Spatial-Directional
Matching and Heading Change Compression
algorithms respectively, which have been
evaluated with real-world datasets in
Beijing and deployed in Chongqing, showing
higher accuracy and efficiency compared to
state-of-the-art algorithms.
This paper proposes a fuel consumption model
based on GPS trajectory and OBD-II data,
which can estimate the fuel usage of driving
paths and help drivers choose fuel-efficient
routes to reduce greenhouse gas and
pollutant emissions.
The SD-Matching algorithm proposes a
three-stage approach to improve the accuracy
and speed of online map-matching by
incorporating vehicle heading direction
data.
Greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles in
modern cities is a significant problem, but
recommending fuel-efficient routes to
drivers through a personalized fuel
consumption model can help alleviate this
issue, as demonstrated by the successful
implementation of GreenPlanner in Beijing,
which achieved a mean fuel consumption error
of less than 7% and an average savings of
20% fuel consumption for suggested
routes.