I am a third-year Ph.D. student in the Robotics and Autonomous Systems Thrust at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (GZ). Before starting my Ph.D., I received my M.S. degree from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at UC San Diego, where I was a member of the Existential Robotics Lab. I received my B.S. degree from the Department of Mathematics at UC San Diego as well.

My research interests broadly span robotics, with a particular focus on control, reinforcement learning, and whole-body locomotion. I am especially interested in developing scalable and generalizable control frameworks that enable robots to operate robustly in complex, real-world environments. Recently, my work has centered on learning-based locomotion for humanoid robots, integrating simulation-driven training with real-world deployment. I also have prior experience in other areas of robotics, including formal methods and safety-critical control.

Education

Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (GZ)
Ph.D. in Robotics and Autonomous Systems

University of California, San Diego
M.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering

University of California, San Diego
B.S. in Mathematics

Internship

X-Humanoid (北京人形机器人创新中心)
Research Intern

Publications

TopoNav: Topological Graphs as a Key Enabler for Advanced Object Navigation
Peiran Liu*, Qiang Zhang*, Daojie PENG*, Lingfeng Zhang*, Yihao Qin, Hang Zhou, Jun Ma, Renjing Xu, Yiding Ji
IEEE International Conference on Robotics & Automation (ICRA), 2026. Paper

DreamNav: A Trajectory-Based Imaginative Framework for Zero-Shot Vision-and-Language Navigation
Yunheng Wang, Yuetong Fang, Taowen Wang, Yixiao Feng, Yawen Tan, Shuning Zhang, Peiran Liu, Yiding Ji, Renjing Xu
IEEE International Conference on Robotics & Automation (ICRA), 2026. Paper

Physics-informed Diffusion Mamba Transformer for Real-world Driving
Hang Zhou, Qiang Zhang, Peiran Liu, Yihao Qin, Zhaoxu Yan, Yiding Ji
IEEE International Conference on Robotics & Automation (ICRA), 2026.

IPD: Boosting Sequential Policy with Imaginary Planning Distillation in Offline Reinforcement Learning
Yihao Qin, Yuanfei Wang, Hang Zhou, Peiran Liu, Hao Dong, and Yiding Ji
International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS), 2026. Paper

On Robust Supervisory Control of Metric Discrete Event Systems for scLTL Specifications
Peiran Liu*, Shaowen Miao*, Yiding Ji, and Xiang Yin
Discrete Event Dynamic Systems: Theory and Applications (JDES), accepted and in press, 2026.

A Value Function Space Approach for Hierarchical Planning with Signal Temporal Logic Tasks
Peiran Liu*, Yiting He*, Yihao Qin, Hang Zhou, and Yiding Ji
IEEE Control Systems Letters (L-CSS), 2025 Paper

Preprints

MeshMimic: Geometry-Aware Humanoid Motion Learning through 3D Scene Reconstruction
Qiang Zhang*, Jiahao Ma*, Peiran Liu*, Shuai Shi*, Zeran Su, Zifan Wang, Jingkai Sun, Wei Cui, Jialin Yu, Gang Han, Wen Zhao, Pihai Sun, Kangning Yin, Jiaxu Wang, Jiahang Cao, Lingfeng Zhang, Hao Cheng, Xiaoshuai Hao, Yiding Ji, Junwei Liang, Jian Tang, Renjing Xu, Yijie Guo
arXiv, 2025. Paper / Project Page

Heracles: Bridging Precise Tracking and Generative Synthesis for General Humanoid Control
Zelin Tao, Zeran Su, Peiran Liu, Jingkai Sun, Wenqiang Que, Jiahao Ma, Jialin Yu, Jiahang Cao, Pihai Sun, Hao Liang, Gang Han, Wen Zhao, Zhiyuan Xu, Yijie Guo, Jian Tang, Qiang Zhang
arXiv, 2026. Paper / Project Page