Undergraduate Student

About Me

Hi, I’m Zhongyu Chen, an undergraduate student majored in Mechanical Engineering at Zhejiang University and University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. I’m interested in machine learning and robotics.

Projects

Failure-aware diffusion for robotic manipulation

Physical Intelligent Lab, ZJU–UIUC · Undergraduate research

Feb 2026 – Present

intl.zju.edu.cn

Diffusion policies and ACT baselines on the ARX-L5 platform for contact-rich tasks.

Deployed the ARX-L5 arm, collected multi-modal teleoperation data, and iterated on training pipelines.
Established a bottle-capping baseline with ACT for imitation from expert demos.
Built a diffusion-based policy on mixed success and failure trials to raise success rate.

Reinforcement learning for quadruped locomotion (Jueying-Lite3)

Physical Intelligent Lab, ZJU–UIUC · Undergraduate research

Apr 2026 – Present

intl.zju.edu.cn

PPO locomotion in MJLab with emphasis on sim-to-real transfer.

Trained a PPO policy for the Jueying-Lite3 quadruped in the MJLab framework.
Ran parallel training with four robots to speed up data collection and improve robustness.
Explored Sim2Sim / Sim2Real, reward shaping, and domain randomization for deployment.

UAV facade crack detection and inspection path planning

Summer research, ZJU · Advisor Prof. Jiangpeng Shu

Jun 2024 – Sep 2024

zju.edu.cn

UAV-based glass curtain wall inspection with YOLOv8 and RRT planning.

Studied UAV-based crack detection with YOLOv8 on facade imagery.
Built and annotated 8,436 images for multi-type crack classification.
Implemented RRT-style planning for inspection paths along building surfaces.

Swarm underwater robots — structure and control

Xingwen Zheng Research Group, ZJU · Advisor Prof. Xingwen Zheng

Oct 2025 – Present

zju.edu.cn

Modular docking and full-body CAD for networked underwater robots.

Designed a modular docking mechanism for autonomous multi-robot connection.
Modeled the full vehicle structure in CAD (Fusion 360 / SolidWorks workflow).

Experience

ManiSkill-ViTac Challenge 2026 (CVPR & ICRA workshop)

Workshop organizer · Online / THU

Jan 2026 – Present

https://callmeray.github.io/Mani_ViTac_Challenge_2026_page

Robotic manipulation with π0.5 and policy fine-tuning on expert demos.

Deployed the π0.5 model stack for manipulation benchmarks.
Fine-tuned foundation policies from high-quality demonstrations for single- and dual-arm tasks.

ECE110 — Introduction to Electronics

Undergraduate teaching assistant · ZJU–UIUC

Spring 2026

zju.edu.cn

Course support, assessment, and line-following robot mentoring.

Held weekly office hours on core course material.
Authored new exam questions for the departmental question bank.
Mentored teams on design and debugging of the line-following robot project.

Illini Puller (1/4-scale tractor team)

CAD subteam leader · UIUC

Aug 2025 – Nov 2025

illinois.edu

Student competition team focused on drivetrain, fabrication, and cost-aware design.

Mentored newer members on CAD workflows and design reviews.
Led design and fabrication of an exhaust heat-shield system (sheet metal, welding).
Researched and sourced components to improve performance within budget.