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About

Qixuan Zhang is a leading researcher at the intersection of robotics, computer graphics, and autonomous systems. Their work focuses on enabling intelligent machines to interact with and understand the physical world, with key contributions in autonomous UAV manipulation, collision-free motion planning, and 3D scene reconstruction. Zhang’s most cited work, "PaintCopter: An Autonomous UAV for Spray Painting on Three-Dimensional Surfaces" (2018, 60 citations), introduces a custom quadrotor system capable of autonomous spray painting, demonstrating a novel application of aerial robotics for industrial tasks. This work has been foundational for subsequent research in aerial physical interaction. To address the critical challenge of safe motion in complex environments, Zhang proposed "Implicit Swept Volume SDF" (2024, 19 citations), a method enabling continuous collision-free trajectory generation for arbitrary, non-convex shapes—a significant advance over discrete approximations. Most recently, in "CAST: Component-Aligned 3D Scene Reconstruction from an RGB Image" (2025, 9 citations), Zhang tackles the difficult problem of recovering high-quality 3D scenes from a single image, overcoming domain-specific limitations to produce superior object generation. With a growing citation impact, Zhang’s work is shaping the future of autonomous robotics and 3D vision, offering practical solutions for manufacturing, navigation, and digital content creation.