Xianchao Long

About

Xianchao Long is a leading researcher in humanoid robotics, specializing in human-supervised control, motion planning, and disaster-response autonomy. As a key member of the Team WPI-CMU during the DARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC), Long made foundational contributions to enabling the 28-degree-of-freedom Atlas humanoid robot to perform complex, real-world tasks. His work on the DRC Trials (78 citations) and Finals (57 citations) demonstrated how human-in-the-loop systems could integrate mobility, manipulation, and perception for reliable disaster response, including the notoriously difficult challenge of door traversal (51 citations). Long advanced motion planning with BiRRTOpt (15 citations), a combined sampling and optimization algorithm that overcomes infeasibility issues in bipedal robots, and developed a foot-repositionable inverse kinematics engine for task-oriented planning (9 citations). His research also extends to in-situ terrain classification for NASA’s Valkyrie robot (13 citations) and risk-aware decision-making for compositional autonomy (4 citations). With over 280 total citations, Long’s work bridges the gap between theoretical motion planning and practical, robust humanoid behavior in unstructured environments, establishing him as a pivotal figure in the push toward reliable humanoid robots for emergency response.

Research Focus

Key Achievements

Top Papers

1. 1
   Human‐in‐the‐loop Control of a Humanoid Robot for Disaster Response: A Report from the DARPA Robotics Challenge Trials

   78 citations · 2015
2. 2
   What Happened at the DARPA Robotics Challenge Finals

   57 citations · 2018
3. 3
   Human-supervised control of the ATLAS humanoid robot for traversing doors

   51 citations · 2015
4. 4
   Team WPI‐CMU: Achieving Reliable Humanoid Behavior in the DARPA Robotics Challenge

   47 citations · 2017
5. 5
   BiRRTOpt: A combined sampling and optimizing motion planner for humanoid robots

   15 citations · 2016
6. 6
   In-situ Terrain Classification and Estimation for NASA’s Humanoid Robot Valkyrie

   13 citations · 2020
7. 7
   Task-oriented planning algorithm for humanoid robots based on a foot repositionable inverse kinematics engine

   9 citations · 2016
8. 8
   Template-based human supervised robot task programming

   6 citations · 2016
9. 9
   Anytime multi-task motion planning for humanoid robots

   6 citations · 2017
10. 10
    Compositional autonomy for humanoid robots with risk-aware decision-making

    4 citations · 2017

Key Collaborators

Contact & Links