Hi there 👋
I'm Yifu Tian. I go by Joseph. I'm now working at Shanghai Jiao Tong University as a visiting student under the supervision of Prof. Tong Qin. I will join George Washington University in Fall 2026 as a Ph.D. student under the supervision of Prof. Chuchu Chen.
I received my B.Eng. in Electrical Computer Engineering from The Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2025.
Previously:
- I was a visiting student at ICT@CAS.
- I worked as a research assistant at AIRS.
- I was also a visiting scholar at UIUC, Thomas M. Siebel Center for CS.
- After graduating from CUHK-Shenzhen, I worked as a research assistant in FAST Lab@Zhejiang University.
Email / Google Scholar / GitHub / LinkedIn / Bilibili
Yifu (Joseph) Tian
Visiting Student@ SJTU
Incoming PhD student@ GWU
Email: josepht@gwmail.gwu.edu
- March, 2026: I started my internship at Shanghai Jiao Tong University.
- June, 2025: I received B.Eng. in Electrical Computer Engineering from The Chinese University of Hong Kong.
Yifu Tian, Xinhang Xu, Thien-Minh Nguyen, Muqing Cao
IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2026(Under Review)
Paper / Video / Code /
In extreme environments, tethered robots require continuous navigation while avoiding cable entanglement. Traditional planners struggle in these lifelong planning scenarios due to topological unawareness, while topology-augmented graphsearch methods face computational bottlenecks in obstaclerich environments where the number of candidate topological classes increases. To address these challenges, we propose Topological Motion Planning Diffusion (TMPD), a novel generative planning framework that integrates lifelong topological memory. Benchmarking in obstacle-rich simulated environments demonstrates that TMPD achieves a collision-free reach of 100% and a tangle-free rate of 97.0%, outperforming traditional topological search and purely kinematic diffusion baselines in both geometric smoothness and computational efficiency. Simulation with AGX-Dynamics for unity further validates the practicality of the proposed approach.
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The George Wahington University, Washington D.C., USA
ME PhD in Robotics • Aug. 2026 to Present
Advisor: Prof. Chuchu CHEN
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The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen, China
B.Eng in ECE • Aug. 2021 to Jun. 2025
Academic Advisor: Prof. Pooi-Yuen KAM
- Reviewer, IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2026.
- Reviewer, IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L), 2026.
- I also upload videos about my research on Bilibili. My goal is to record my academic growth. Feel free to watch here.
MIT 6.S184: Conditional and Marginal Vector Fields
Course learning notes from MIT 6.S184.
MIT 6.S184: Conditional and Marginal Probability Path
Course learning notes from MIT 6.S184.
MIT 6.S184: Generative Modelling as Sampling
Course learning notes from MIT 6.S184.
MIT 6.S184: Flow Models
Course learning notes from MIT 6.S184.
OpenVINS数学理论讲解
An intuitive walkthrough of the mathematical foundations behind OpenVINS.
关于扩散模型分类器引导的一点思考
Some thoughts about Classifier-guidance in Diffusion Models.
MPD: 使用扩散模型学习与规划机器人的运动
An intuitive review note of Motion Planning Diffusion(MPD).
Beyond academic research, I am deeply committed to educational equity. I have been actively participating in charitable initiatives to support children in underdeveloped mountainous regions, providing them with educational resources and tutoring to help them pursue their studies.
Guzheng(learned since I was 6-year-old), Hiking, FPV, History, Chess, League of Legends(highest ranking Emerald on the NA server).
