Rongtao Zhang
张镕韬 | Master Student
University of Southern California
I am a second-year M.S. student at the University of Southern California, conducting research in the HaRVI Lab. I received my B.Eng. from the School of Computer and Information Technology at Beijing Jiaotong University.
I’ve previously spent wonderful summers at BJTU INSIS and MIT CSGF, and was fortunate to intern at CASIA and Lenovo. These experiences shaped my interests in reinforcement learning and robotics.
My current research focuses on leveraging multimodal inputs to build more capable robot learning systems that can meaningfully improve people’s lives. I am also interested in human–robot interaction and extended reality (XR) systems.
Beyond research, I have volunteered as a teacher in both China and the United States, and as a volunteer at the Beijing Zoo—experiences I deeply cherish.
Outside the lab, I enjoy piano, writing, and Chinese classical poetry.
- Robot Learning
- Reinforcement Learning
- Haptic Intelligence
- Computer Vision
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University of Southern California, 2023 - 2025
M.S. in Machine Learning & Data Science
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Beijing Jiaotong University, 2018 - 2023
B.Eng. in Internet of Things Engineering
Academic Service
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Reviewer
- IEEE Transactions on Cognitive Communications and Networking
- IEEE Communications Surveys Tutorials
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Course Producer
- USC CSCI 649: Haptic Interfaces and Virtual Environments (Spring 2025)
- [2025/6] Attending RSS 2025 — see you in Los Angeles!
- [2025/3] Serve as a reviewer for IEEE COMST and IEEE TCCN.
- [2025/1] Serving as Course Producer for USC CSCI 649 (Spring 2025).
- [2024/6] Volunteered with Peace4Kids in Los Angeles with USC HaRVI Lab, a meaningful experience.
- [2024/3] I’m very happy to be a member of USC HaRVI Lab!
Experience
Advised by Dr. Heather Culbertson, collaborated with Dr. Erdem Bıyık.
- Developed a preference-learning–based haptic recommendation system that performs interactive search, leveraging human preference feedback and model uncertainty to learn the latent distribution of users’ haptic preferences.
- Developed a hand-tracking and control module for a 6-DoF motion-platform VR surfing system, fusing hand kinematics with surfboard motion control to enhance interaction naturalness and VR presence.
- Implemented a vision-tracked haptic feedback module for a telepresence social interaction system, enabling remote interaction via a wearable haptic glove with haptic cues synchronized to visual tracking.
Research focus: Reinforcement Learning for Mobile Edge Computing and improving policy optimization algorithms.
Robot Manipulation: Implemented an automatic refueling system for a mechanical arm via deep reinforcement learning.
Image Inpainting: Developed a demo showcasing watermark removal and image inpainting using Multi-Column Convolutional Neural Networks optimized with Genetic Algorithm.
Projects
Contact
- rongtaoz@usc.edu
- University Park Campus 3551 Trousdale Pkwy, Los Angeles, CA 90007