Lawrence Yunliang Chen
University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley Systems (United States), Berkeley College
Papers
14
Total Citations
142
H-Index
6
About
Lawrence Yunliang Chen is a robotics researcher whose work lies at the intersection of deformable object manipulation, robot learning, and surgical assistance. His most significant contributions center on enabling robots to handle complex, non-rigid materials—from cables and plastic bags to garments and surgical shunts. Chen pioneered the task of Planar Robot Casting (PRC), where a robot arm uses a single planar motion to slide a cable’s free end to a target, effectively extending the robot’s reach beyond its workspace. His Real2Sim2Real framework for self-supervised learning of this skill has garnered 39 citations. He also introduced AutoBag, a system that learns to open thin, specular plastic bags and insert objects—a notoriously difficult perception and manipulation challenge—earning 29 citations. Beyond these, Chen has advanced garment smoothing via single-arm fling motions, in-context imitation learning with the In-Context Robot Transformer (ICRT), and robot-assisted vascular shunt insertion using the da Vinci Research Kit, addressing scenarios where a supervising surgeon is local, remote, or unavailable. His work on Fleet-DAgger further tackles scalable human supervision for robot fleets. With over 130 total citations across his top papers, Chen is shaping how robots learn to handle the physical world’s most challenging materials.
Research Focus
Key Achievements
Top Papers
- 1
- 2AutoBag: Learning to Open Plastic Bags and Insert Objects29 citations · 2023
- 3Efficiently Learning Single-Arm Fling Motions to Smooth Garments20 citations · 2023
- 4Planar Robot Casting with Real2Sim2Real Self-Supervised Learning13 citations · 2021
- 5
- 6Bagging by Learning to Singulate Layers Using Interactive Perception6 citations · 2023
- 7ICRT: In-Context Imitation Learning via Next-Token Prediction5 citations · 2025
- 8
- 9Optimal Shelf Arrangement to Minimize Robot Retrieval Time4 citations · 2022
- 10Robot-Assisted Vascular Shunt Insertion with the dVRK Surgical Robot3 citations · 2023