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About

Mengxue Hou is a robotics researcher whose work bridges autonomous systems, artificial intelligence, and marine engineering. Her primary research areas include autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) control, human-robot interaction through natural language, and robotic manipulation in challenging environments. Hou’s major contributions center on making underwater robots more accessible and autonomous. She developed OceanChat and OceanPlan, pioneering systems that allow operators to pilot AUVs using natural language commands rather than complex programming, with OceanPlan introducing hierarchical LLM-task-motion planning for large-scale ocean exploration. Her work on AquaBot represents a breakthrough in self-improving autonomous underwater manipulation, reducing reliance on human teleoperation in complex fluid environments. Hou has also contributed to blimp dynamics modeling, with her 2018 paper on parameter identification through swinging motion accumulating 24 citations, and her recent work on belief abstraction using the Mori-Zwanzig formalism for planning in partially observable environments. With over 40 total citations across her publications, Hou is establishing herself as an innovator at the intersection of large language models and marine robotics, making underwater exploration more intuitive and efficient for researchers and practitioners alike.