About

Yandong Ji is a robotics researcher whose work spans legged locomotion, whole-body control, and human-robot interaction, with growing influence across both academic and applied robotics communities. His research has made significant strides in enabling quadrupedal and humanoid robots to perform complex real-world tasks through reinforcement learning. Most notably, his work on expressive whole-body control for humanoid robots (72 citations) demonstrates how large-scale human motion capture data can drive lifelike robot movement, while DribbleBot (43 citations) and his hierarchical reinforcement learning framework for soccer shooting (58 citations) showcase legged robots performing dynamic, dexterous manipulation in unstructured environments. Beyond locomotion, Ji has contributed meaningfully to human augmentation, with his study on ankle exoskeleton-assisted walking (62 citations) informing the design of more effective wearable rehabilitation devices. His more recent contributions—including NaVILA, a vision-language-action model for legged robot navigation, and RoboDuet, a cooperative loco-manipulation framework—reflect a forward-looking trajectory toward language-guided, multi-modal robotic systems. Collectively accumulating over 260 citations, Ji's body of work positions him as an emerging force in intelligent legged robotics.

Research Focus

Key Achievements

6
H-Index
10
Papers
267
Total Citations
27
Avg Citations/Paper
🏆 Most Cited Paper
Expressive Whole-Body Control for Humanoid Robots
72 citations · 2024
📈 Most Prolific Year: 2024 (4 Papers)
🤝 Key Collaborators: 38
🏛 Institutions: Nankai University, University of California, Berkeley, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of San Diego

Top Papers

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Key Collaborators

Contact & Links

Available for collaboration
Content generated · 14 days ago