Yiqing Xu

National University of Singapore. yiqing[dot]xu[at]u[dot]nus[dot]edu

prof_pic.jpg

NUS School of Computing, COM1, 13, Computing Dr

Singapore 117417

I’m Yiqing Xu, a CS Ph.D. candidate at the National University of Singapore, advised by Prof. David Hsu. Previously, I obtained double degrees in Computer Science and Applied Mathematics from NUS.

I was a visiting Ph.D. student at MIT CSAIL, advised by Prof. Leslie Kaelbling and Prof. Tomás Lozano-Pérez from September 2023 to February 2024.

research highlights

My research focuses on translating human objectives into signals for robotic optimization. I design inverse reinforcement learning (IRL) algorithms and develop compositional hierarchical representations to better align robots with human goals, enabling them to understand and assist people more effectively.

I’ve been working on algorithm research and theoretical analysis for inferring reward functions from limited data. My latest work, “Set It Up!”, tackles the challenge of grounding under-specified instructions, such as “set up a Chinese dining table for two,” in tabletop arrangement tasks. We introduce a neuro-symbolic framework that integrates semantic inference from large language models with geometric reasoning from pre-trained diffusion models of basic object relationships.

I’m excited to extend this neuro-symbolic framework to a wider range of robotic tasks, such as generating complex 3D structures from simple sub-units and effectively chaining skills through compositional skill functions. If you’d like to chat more, feel free to email me!

selected publications

  1. RHIRL.png
    Receding Horizon Inverse Reinforcement Learning
    Yiqing Xu, Wei Gao, and David Hsu
    In Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS), 2022
    arXiv
  2. LLMReward.png
    Learning Reward for Physical Skills using Large Language Model
    Yuwei Zeng, and Yiqing Xu
    In Conference on Robot Learning (CoRL), LangRob workshop, 2023
    arXiv
  3. TidyItUp.png
    "Tidy Up the Table": Grounding Common-sense Objective for Tabletop Object Rearrangement
    Yiqing Xu, and David Hsu
    In Robotics: Science and Systems (RSS), LangRob workshop, 2023
    arXiv
  4. Effective_IRL.png
    On the Effective Horizon of Inverse Reinforcement Learning
    Yiqing Xu, Finale Doshi-Velez, and David Hsu
    In In submission, 2024
    arXiv
  5. SetItUp.png
    "Set It Up!": Functional Object Arrangement with Compositional Generative Models
    Yiqing Xu, Jiayuan Mao, Yilun Du, and 3 more authors
    In Robotics: Science and Systems (RSS), 2024
    arXiv