Rongtao Zhang
张镕韬
Peking University
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I am currently working with Dr. Huanbo Sun at Peking University on robot learning. I received my M.S. degree from the University of Southern California, where I was fortunate to be advised by Dr. Heather Culbertson and work closely with Dr. Erdem Biyik. I earned my B.Eng. from the School of Computer and Information Technology at Beijing Jiaotong University, where I was advised by Dr. Youfang Lin and Sheng Han.
I have 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 long-term research goal is to enable robots to better understand and interact with the physical world. Specifically, I aim to develop more robust robot learning systems using multimodal inputs, thereby enhancing robotic capabilities and ultimately improving people’s lives.
Beyond research, I have volunteered as a teacher in both China and the United States, and also as a volunteer at the Beijing Zoo—experiences I truly cherish. Outside the lab, I enjoy piano, badminton, and Chinese classical poetry.
- Robotics
- Machine Learning
- Haptics
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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 Information Forensics and Security
- IEEE Transactions on Cognitive Communications and Networking
- IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials
- IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing
- EURASIP Journal on wireless communications and networking
- Journal of network and computer applications.
- China Communications
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Teaching
- Course Producer, USC CSCI 649: Haptic Interfaces and Virtual Environments (Spring 2025)
- [2026/4] Our paper was accepted at ACM UMAP 2026 (acceptance rate 24.4%) — see you in Gothenburg!
- [2026/3] Excited to join Peking University and continue my research journey in robotics and AI!
- [2026/2] Had a wonderful time at NVIDIA — thank you all!
- [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, a meaningful experience.
Publications
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
- rongtao.zhang@pku.edu.cn
- Xin Ao Engineering Building, Peking University, 5 Yiheyuan Road, Haidian, Beijing 100871