Yaru Niu

Selected Publications

Notation * indicates equal contributions.

1. 

   Learning Versatile Humanoid Manipulation with Touch Dreaming

   Yaru Niu, Zhenlong Fang, Binghong Chen, Shuai Zhou, Revanth Senthilkumaran, Hao Zhang, Bingqing Chen, Chen Qiu, H. Eric Tseng, Jonathan Francis, Ding Zhao

   arXiv preprint, 2026

   PDF Code Webpage Video X Summary Media (TechXplore) Media (IEEE Spectrum)
2. 

   HALyPO: Heterogeneous-Agent Lyapunov Policy Optimization for Human-Robot Collaboration

   Hao Zhang,  Yaru Niu, Yikai Wang, Ding Zhao, H. Eric Tseng

   In International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML), 2026 (Oral, top 0.7%)

   PDF Webpage
3. 

   Human2LocoMan: Learning Versatile Quadrupedal Manipulation with Human Pretraining

   Yaru Niu*, Yunzhe Zhang*, Mingyang Yu, Changyi Lin, Chenhao Li, Yikai Wang, Yuxiang Yang, Wenhao Yu, Tingnan Zhang, Zhenzhen Li, Jonathan Francis, Bingqing Chen, Jie Tan, Ding Zhao

   In Robotics: Science and Systems (RSS), 2025

   PDF Code Webpage Dataset Models Talk 中文讲解 Video X Summary Media (CMU Engineering) Media (IEEE Spectrum)
4. 

   Learning Multi-Agent Loco-Manipulation for Long-Horizon Quadrupedal Pushing

   Yuming Feng*, Chuye Hong*,  Yaru Niu*, Shiqi Liu, Yuxiang Yang, Wenhao Yu, Tingnan Zhang, Jie Tan, Ding Zhao

   In International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2025

   PDF Code Webpage
5. 

   QuietPaw: Learning Quadrupedal Locomotion with Versatile Noise Preference Alignment

   Yuyou Zhang, Yihang Yao, Shiqi Liu,  Yaru Niu, Changyi Lin, Yuxiang Yang, Wenhao Yu, Tingnan Zhang, Jie Tan, Ding Zhao

   In International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2025

   PDF
6. 

   LocoMan: Advancing Versatile Quadrupedal Dexterity with Lightweight Loco-Manipulators

   Changyi Lin, Xingyu Liu, Yuxiang Yang,  Yaru Niu, Wenhao Yu, Tingnan Zhang, Jie Tan, Byron Boots, Ding Zhao

   In International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2024
   Spotlight talk at ICRA 2024 Workshop on Future Roadmap for Manipulation SKills

   PDF Code Webpage X Summary Media (TechXplore) Media (CMU Engineering) Media (IEEE Spectrum)
7. 

   COMPOSER: Scalable and Robust Modular Policies for Snake Robots

   Yuyou Zhang,  Yaru Niu, Xingyu Liu, Ding Zhao

   In International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2024
   Abridged in CoRL 2023 Workshop on Learning for Soft Robots: Hard Challenges for Soft Systems (Spotlight)

   PDF Webpage
8. 

   Safety-aware Causal Representation for Trustworthy Reinforcement Learning in Autonomous Driving

   Haohong Lin, Wenhao Ding, Zuxin Liu,  Yaru Niu, Jiacheng Zhu, Yuming Niu, Ding Zhao

   Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L), 2024
   Abridged in Machine Learning for Autonomous Driving Symposium

   PDF Code Poster Webpage
9. 

   Creative Robot Tool Use with Large Language Models

   Mengdi Xu*, Peide Huang*, Wenhao Yu*, Shiqi Liu, Xilun Zhang,  Yaru Niu, Tingnan Zhang, Fei Xia, Jie Tan, Ding Zhao

   arXiv preprint, 2023
   In CoRL 2023 Workshop on Language and Robot Learning and NeurIPS 2023 Workshop on Foundation Models for Decision Making

   PDF Poster Webpage X Summary Media (TechXplore) Media (ML@CMU) Media (CMU Engineering)
10. 

    GOATS: Goal Sampling Adaptation for Scooping with Curriculum Reinforcement Learning

    Yaru Niu, Shiyu Jin*, Zeqing Zhang*, Jiacheng Zhu, Ding Zhao, Liangjun Zhang

    In International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2023
    Abridged in ICRA 2023 Workshop on Representing and Manipulating Deformable Objects [PDF] [Spotlight Talk]

    PDF Poster Webpage Talk Video
11. 

    Interpretable Reinforcement Learning for Robotics and Continuous Control

    Rohan Paleja*, Letian Chen*,  Yaru Niu*, Andrew Silva, Zhaoxin Li, Songan Zhang, Chace Ritchie, Sugju Choi, Kimberlee Chestnut Chang, Hongtei Eric Tseng, Yan Wang, Subramanya Nageshrao, Matthew Gombolay

    arXiv preprint, 2023

    PDF Code
12. 

    Group Distributionally Robust Reinforcement Learning with Hierarchical Latent Variables

    Mengdi Xu, Peide Huang,  Yaru Niu, Visak Kumar, Jielin Qiu, Chao Fang, Kuan-Hui Lee, Xuewei Qi, Henry Lam, Bo Li, Ding Zhao

    In International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Statistics (AISTATS), 2023
    In 5th Symposium on Advances in Approximate Bayesian Inference

    PDF Poster Webpage
13. 

    Domain Knowledge Driven Pseudo Labels for Interpretable Goal-Conditioned Interactive Trajectory Prediction

    Lingfeng Sun*, Chen Tang*,  Yaru Niu, Enna Sachdeva, Chiho Choi, Teruhisa Misu, Masayoshi Tomizuka, Wei Zhan

    In International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2022

    PDF Slides Talk
14. 

    Adaptable and Scalable Multi-Agent Graph-Attention Communication

    Yaru Niu
    Committee:  Matthew Gombolay,  Ayanna Howard,  Sonia Chernova

    Master’s Thesis, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2022

    HTML PDF
15. 

    Learning Interpretable, High-Performing Policies for Autonomous Driving

    Rohan Paleja*,  Yaru Niu*, Andrew Silva, Chace Ritchie, Sugju Choi, Matthew Gombolay

    In Robotics: Science and Systems (RSS), 2022

    HTML PDF Code Poster Talk
16. 

    Multi-Agent Graph-Attention Communication and Teaming

    Yaru Niu*, Rohan Paleja*, Matthew Gombolay

    In International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS), 2021 (Oral)
    Best Paper Award at ICCV 2021 Mair2 Workshop [PDF] [Spotlight Talk]

    PDF Code Talk
17. 

    Real-Time Whole-Body Imitation by Humanoid Robots and Task-Oriented Teleoperation using an Analytical Mapping Method and Quantitative Evaluation

    Zhijun Zhang*,  Yaru Niu*, Ziyi Yan, Shuyang Lin

    Applied Sciences, 2018

    HTML PDF Code Video