Ad astra abyssosque!

Yichao Zhong

I am a PhD student in Robotics at HKU, advised by Prof. Hongyang Li and Prof. Jia Pan. During my undergraduate years at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, I was fortunate to work with Prof. Weinan Zhang at SJTU and Prof. Guanya Shi at CMU, and honored to intern at Shanghai AI Lab and Horizon Robotics.

My research seeks to unlock the adaptivity and agility of humanoids — spanning adaptive and agile and robust locomotion, interaction and motion skills. Find more in my Curriculum Vitae.

Email CV Scholar GitHub X Instagram
Yichao Zhong portrait

News

  • 2026/06 RoboNaldo is available on arXiv.
  • 2025/09 Started my PhD at HKU.
  • 2025/06 Finished my Graduate Thesis! I graduate from SJTU with a Bachelor of Engineering.
  • 2025/03 Bridging Adaptivity and Safety is accepted by L4DC 2025. See you in Michigan!
  • 2024/12 One paper is submitted to L4DC 2025.
  • 2024/06 I start my internship at LeCAR Lab at CMU.

Publications

Arxiv
RoboNaldo Teaser

RoboNaldo: Accurate, Stable and Powerful Humanoid Soccer Shooting via Motion-Guided Curriculum Reinforcement Learning

Yichao Zhong*, Yidan Lu*, Yuhang Lu, Tianyang Tang, Haoguang Mai, Yixuan Pan, Tianyu Li, Li Chen, Jingbo Wang, Zhongyu Li, Peng Lu*, Hongyang Li*
Arxiv Preprint

Paper Website Code
Arxiv
SNav Teaser

Sparse Video Generation Propels Real-World Beyond-the-View Vision-Language Navigation

Hai Zhang*, Siqi Liang*, Li Chen, Yuxian Li, Yukuan Xu, Yichao Zhong, Fu Zhang, Hongyang Li
Arxiv Preprint

Paper Website
L4DC 2025
BAS Teaser

Bridging Adaptivity and Safety: Learning Agile Collision-Free Locomotion Across Varied Physics

Yichao Zhong, Chong Zhang, Tairan He, Guanya Shi
L4DC 2025

Paper Website
Arxiv
DMSurvey Teaser

Diffusion Models for Reinforcement Learning: A Survey

Zhengbang Zhu, Hanye Zhao, Haoran He, Yichao Zhong, Shenyu Zhang, Haoquan Guo, Tingting Chen, Weinan Zhang
Arxiv, in submission

Paper Project Repo

Selected Projects

ICMSSP2024
KMD Teaser

Kinematic Motion Diffusion: Towards Semantic-adaptive Motion Synthesis via Kinematic Guidance

Leizhi Li*, Jincheng Yang*, Yichao Zhong*, Junxian Guo*
Course Project of AI3604 Computer Vision, 2023 Fall, SJTU
Accepted by International Conference on Multimedia Systems and Signal Processing (ICMSSP), 2024

Project
RL24 Teaser

Reinforcement Learning for Adaptive Control of Quadrupedal Robots: An Emperical Study

Yichao Zhong
Course Project of CS3316 Reinforcement Learning, 2024 Spring, SJTU

Paper Demo Code
Compiler Teaser

A Handbuilt Java Implemented Mx* Language Compiler from sketch

Yichao Zhong
Course Project of CS2966 Compiler Course Design, 2022 Fall, SJTU

Code
FoN Teaser

FoN: Focusing on Numbers to Master Efficient Reasoning for LLM

Yichao Zhong, Yongshan Chen
Course Project of CS2916 Large Language Models, 2024 Spring, SJTU

Code and Paper

Education

HKU Logo

The University of Hong Kong

School of Computing and Data Science
PhD Student, 2025/09 - Present
Advisor(s): Prof. Hongyang Li, Prof. Jia Pan

CMU Logo

Carnegie Mellon University

Robotics Institute
Student Intern, 2024/06 - 2024/12
Advisor(s): Prof. Guanya Shi

SJTU Logo

Shanghai Jiao Tong University

ACM Honor Class, Zhiyuan College
Undergraduate in Computer Science, 2021/09 - 2025/06
Advisor(s): Prof. Weinan Zhang, Prof. Yong Yu

Experience

AILab Lab Logo

Shanghai AI Laboratory

Intern, 2025/03 - 2025/06
Advisor(s): Prof. Weinan Zhang

LeCAR Lab Logo

LeCAR Lab

Visiting Student, 2024/06 - 2024/12
Advisor(s): Prof. Guanya Shi

APEX Logo

APEX Data & Knowledge Management Lab, RL Group, SJTU

Research Assistant, 2023/09 - 2025/06 (Expected)
Advisor(s): Prof. Weinan Zhang, Prof. Yong Yu

Honors & Awards

  • 2022/12 Longfor Scholarship (top 10% in ACM Honor Class)
  • 2022/02 Honorable Mention, the 2022 COMAP Mathematical Contest in Modeling(MCM)
  • 2021/12, 2022/12. 2023/12, 2024/12 Zhiyuan Honor Scholarship (top 2% in SJTU)

Miscellaneous

  • Aside my academic persuits, I also enjoy my leisure time in sports. I love playing soccer most, usually playing as a midfielder in the pitch. My facorite soccer team is Real Madrid. I'm also a enthusiastic fan of Formula 1.
  • I used to be a Phyisics Olympiad contestant in high school, and I'm still interested in the frontier of physics and astronomy. Physics is always inspiring me on the way of exploring the unknown.
  • I love music. I'm an amateur pianist and a huge fan of Taylor Swift. I'm also interested in Vocaloid and AI Generated Music projects like So-VITS.