John Hua Yao

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John Hua Yao

I am a Research Assistant in the IRIS Lab at Stanford University, advised by Chelsea Finn. Previously, I worked with Zipeng Fu. Recently, I completed my Master's degree at the University of Amsterdam, and before that I graduated from Imperial College London.

I'm interested in high speed robot learning, contact-rich manipulation, and practical solutions to accelerating robot learning research.

Publications

SPAR overview: residual learning for force-sensitive manipulation

SPAR: Learning Fast Dynamic Imitation Online

John Hua Yao, Ajay Sridhar, Aneesh Muppidi, Jaden Clark, Lars Ankile, Zipeng Fu, Chelsea Finn

in submission

project page | paper

Learning fast, compliant manipulation from position-only demonstrations through real-world residual reinforcement learning.

ALOHA Lightning teaser

ALOHA Lightning: Learning Fast and Precise Manipulation

John Hua Yao, Qi Wu, Yihuai Gao, Chelsea Finn, Zipeng Fu

ICRA 2026

project page | paper

A full-stack system for learning fast, precise bimanual manipulation from near-human-speed kinesthetic demonstrations.