Xiao Liang

I am currently a Second-year Ph.D student at UCSD Advanced Robotics and Controls Lab (ARClab), advised by Prof. Michael Yip. Prior to that, I received a M.S in Computer Science degree at UCSD and a B.S in Computer Science at University of Washington.

Google Scholar / Email / Github / Resume / 中文简历

Research

I'm interested in the intersecting fields of robotics, physics simulation, and machine learning. I develop machine learning algorithms and physics simulation models to achieve robot autonomy in manipulation tasks, specially involving soft, deformable objects in surgical scenarios.

Industrial Experience

Applied Scientist Co-op

Amazon Robotics, Manipulation Research | Boston, MA | Sep. 2025 -- Mar. 2026

Researched physics-informed video prediction models for robotic manipulation. Manuscript submitted for publication.

Publications
	Towards Autonomous Tape Handling for Robotic Wound Redressing Xiao Liang, Lu Shen, Peihan Zhang, Soofiyan Atar, Florian Richter, Michael C. Yip IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2026. [Paper link]
	Feedback Matters: Augmenting Autonomous Dissection with Visual and Topological Feedback Chung-Pang Wang, Changwei Chen, Xiao Liang, Soofiyan Atar, Florian Richter, Michael C. Yip IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2026. [Paper link]
	Efficient Surgical Robotic Instrument Pose Reconstruction in Real World Conditions Using Unified Feature Detection Zekai Liang, Kazuya Miyata, Xiao Liang, Florian Richter, Michael C. Yip arXiv preprint, 2025. [Paper link]
	LapSurgie: Humanoid Robots Performing Surgery via Teleoperated Handheld Laparoscopy Zekai Liang, Xiao Liang, Soofiyan Atar, Sreyan Das, Zoe Chiu, Peihan Zhang, Calvin Joyce, Florian Richter, Shanglei Liu, Michael C. Yip IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2026. [Paper link]
	Humanoids in Hospitals: A Technical Study of Humanoid Surrogates for Dexterous Medical Interventions Soofiyan Atar, Xiao Liang, Calvin Joyce, Florian Richter, Ricardo Wood, Charles Goldberg, Preetham Suresh, Michael Yip [Paper link][Website][Video]
	AutoPeel: Adhesion-aware Safe Peeling Trajectory Optimization for Robotic Wound Care Xiao Liang, Youcheng Zhang, Fei Liu, Florian Richter, Michael C. Yip IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2025, [Best Paper Finalist]. [Paper link]
	MEDiC: Autonomous Surgical Robotic Assistance to Maximizing Exposure for Dissection and Cautery Xiao Liang, Chung-pang Wang, Nikhil Shinde, Fei Liu, Florian Richter, Michael C. Yip IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2025, [Best Workshop Paper Finalist @ELSR]. [Paper link]
	Investigating Low Data, Confidence Aware Image Prediction on Smooth Repetitive Videos using Gaussian Processes Nikhil Shinde, Xiao Liang, Florian Richter, Sylvia Lee Herbert, Michael C. Yip IEEE International Conference on Automation Science and Engineering (CASE), 2024. [Paper link]
	JIGGLE: An Active Sensing Framework for Boundary Parameters Estimation in Deformable Surgical Environments Xiao Liang, Nikhil Shinde, Fei Liu, Yutong Zhang, Florian Richter, Sylvia Lee Herbert, Michael C. Yip Robotics: Science and Systems (RSS), 2024, [Best Workshop Abstract @ICRA2025]. [Paper link]
	Real-to-Sim Deformable Object Manipulation: Optimizing Physics Models with Residual Mappings for Robotic Surgery Xiao Liang, Fei Liu, Yutong Zhang, Yuelei Li, Shan Lin, Michael C. Yip IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2024. [Paper link]
	Achieving Autonomous Cloth Manipulation with Optimal Control via Differentiable Physics-Aware Regularization and Safety Constraints Yutong Zhang, Fei Liu, Xiao Liang,Michael C. Yip IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2024. [Paper link]
	ORRN: An ODE-Based Recursive Registration Network for Deformable Respiratory Motion Estimation With Lung 4DCT Images Xiao Liang, Shan Lin, Fei Liu, Dimitri Schreiber, Michael C. Yip IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering (TBME), 2023 [Paper link] [Code]