Shaohui Yang

École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, State Key Laboratory of Industrial Control Technology

Papers

Total Citations

244

H-Index

About

Shaohui Yang is a robotics researcher whose work spans two dynamic frontiers: legged locomotion and aerial robotics. His most influential contribution, "Perceptive Locomotion Through Nonlinear Model-Predictive Control" (2023), has garnered an impressive 237 citations, establishing him as a significant voice in the field of autonomous robot navigation. This work addresses one of the most demanding challenges in robotics — enabling legged systems to traverse rough, unstructured terrain by integrating accurate foot placement, collision avoidance, and underactuated dynamics planning under real-world perceptive uncertainty. The framework's ability to reliably optimize complex locomotion behaviors despite imperfect sensory information represents a meaningful advance in robust robot control. Beyond legged systems, Yang has also contributed to aerial robotics with his work on whole-body real-time motion planning for multicopters, developing optimization-based frameworks that account for a drone's full geometry and attitude to push the boundaries of agile flight. Together, these contributions reflect Yang's broader research vision: bridging perception, optimal control, and planning to create robots capable of operating with greater autonomy and agility in challenging, real-world environments — a goal that continues to shape modern robotics research.