ARCS Lab Members

A summary of each member’s ongoing research can be found here (updated date: August 2024).

Ph.D. Students

• Philip Huang (RI PhD, Fall 2023)


Philip Huang received a BASc in Engineering Science in 2021 and an MSc in Computer Science in 2023 from the University of Toronto. His research interests include multi-robot collaboration, task and motion planning, and machine learning. A long-term goal of his research is to develop algorithms that enable individual robots and robot teams to accomplish complex and long-horizon tasks in dynamic and uncertain environments.

• Yorai Shaoul (RI PhD, Fall 2022)


Yorai earned a B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2021. His research interests span multi-robot task and motion planning, robotic manipulation, statistical learning, and computer vision. He works to harness insights from established planning algorithms to address messy real-world challenges in manipulation.

Publications
• Multi-Robot Motion Planning with Diffusion Models.
  Yorai Shaoul*, Itamar Mishani*, Shivam Vats*, Jiaoyang Li, Maxim Likhachev.
  International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR), 2025.
  
• Unconstraining Multi-Robot Manipulation: Enabling Arbitrary Constraints in ECBS with Bounded Sub-Optimality.
  Yorai Shaoul, Rishi Veerapaneni, Maxim Likhachev, Jiaoyang Li.
  Symposium on Combinatorial Search (SoCS), pages 109--117, 2024.
  
• Accelerating Search-Based Planning for Multi-Robot Manipulation by Leveraging Online-Generated Experiences. (Best Student Paper)
  Yorai Shaoul, Itamar Mishani, Maxim Likhachev, Jiaoyang Li.
  International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS), pages 523-531, 2024.
  
• Rishi Veerapaneni (RI PhD, Fall 2020)


Rishi works with Professors Maxim Likhachev and Jiaoyang Li in the Robotics Institute at CMU and is supported by the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. His specific research interest is in (1) designing better heuristic search algorithms, (2) multi-agent motion planning and coordination (e.g. MAPF), and (3) combining search with machine learning. Previously, he double majored in EECS and Applied Math at UC Berkeley and was very active in teaching (EE16A, CS188, CS170 x2).

Publications
• Deploying Ten Thousand Robots: Scalable Imitation Learning for Lifelong Multi-Agent Path Finding.
  He Jiang*, Yutong Wang*, Rishi Veerapaneni, Tanishq Harish Duhan, Guillaume Adrien Sartoretti, Jiaoyang Li.
  IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2025.
  
• Work Smarter Not Harder: Simple Imitation Learning with CS-PIBT Outperforms Large Scale Imitation Learning for MAPF.
  Rishi Veerapaneni*, Arthur Jakobsson*, Kevin Ren, Samuel Kim, Jiaoyang Li, Maxim Likhachev.
  IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2025.
  
• Windowed MAPF with Completeness Guarantees.
  Rishi Veerapaneni, Muhammad Suhail Saleem, Jiaoyang Li, Maxim Likhachev.
  AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), 2025.
  
• Scaling Lifelong Multi-Agent Path Finding to More Realistic Settings: Research Challenges and Opportunities. (Winner of 2023 League of Robot Runners)
  He Jiang, Yulun Zhang, Rishi Veerapaneni, Jiaoyang Li.
  Symposium on Combinatorial Search (SoCS), pages 234-242, 2024.
  
• Unconstraining Multi-Robot Manipulation: Enabling Arbitrary Constraints in ECBS with Bounded Sub-Optimality.
  Yorai Shaoul, Rishi Veerapaneni, Maxim Likhachev, Jiaoyang Li.
  Symposium on Combinatorial Search (SoCS), pages 109--117, 2024.
  
• MAPF in 3D Warehouses: Dataset and Analysis.
  Qian Wang*, Rishi Veerapaneni*, Yu Wu, Jiaoyang Li, Maxim Likhachev.
  International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS), pages 623-632, 2024.
  
• Improving Learnt Local MAPF Policies with Heuristic Search.
  Rishi Veerapaneni*, Qian Wang*, Kevin Ren*, Arthur Jakobsson, Jiaoyang Li, Maxim Likhachev.
  International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS), pages 597-606, 2024.
  
• Bidirectional Temporal Plan Graph: Enabling Switchable Passing Orders for More Efficient Multi-Agent Path Finding Plan Execution.
  Yifan Su, Rishi Veerapaneni, Jiaoyang Li.
  AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), pages 17559-17566, 2024.
  
• Jingtian Yan (RI PhD, Fall 2024)


Jingtian received a B.Sc. from Zhejiang University in 2020 and an M.Sc. from the Carnegie Mellon University in 2023. His research interests include multi-robot coordination, autonomous exploration, and Multi-Agent Path Finding.

Publications
• Multi-agent Motion Planning for Differential Drive Robots Through Stationary State Search.
  Jingtian Yan, Jiaoyang Li.
  AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), 2025.
  A short version appeared at Symposium on Combinatorial Search (SoCS), pages 297-298, 2024.
  
• Multi-Agent Motion Planning With Bézier Curve Optimization Under Kinodynamic Constraints.
  Jingtian Yan, Jiaoyang Li.
  IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, volume 9, number 3, pages 3021-3028, 2024.
  
• Yulun Zhang (RI PhD, Fall 2022)


Yulun received a B.Sc. and an M.Sc. in Computer Science from the University of Southern California in 2021 and 2022. His research interests include human-robot collaboration, multi-robot coordination, evolutionary algorithms, and quality diversity optimization. As a long-term goal, his research focuses on bringing Quality Diversity Optimization and Evolutionary Optimization to Robotics, expanding their applicability and scalability.

Publications
• Online Guidance Graph Optimization for Lifelong Multi-Agent Path Finding.
  Hongzhi Zang*, Yulun Zhang*, He Jiang, Zhe Chen, Daniel Harabor, Peter J. Stuckey, Jiaoyang Li.
  AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), 2025.
  
• Guidance Graph Optimization for Lifelong Multi-Agent Path Finding.
  Yulun Zhang, He Jiang, Varun Bhatt, Stefanos Nikolaidis, Jiaoyang Li.
  International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI), pages 311-320, 2024.
  
• Scalable Mechanism Design for Multi-Agent Path Finding.
  Paul Friedrich*, Yulun Zhang*, Michael Curry, Ludwig Dierks, Stephen McAleer, Jiaoyang Li, Tuomas Sandholm, Sven Seuken.
  International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI), pages 58-66, 2024.
  
• Scaling Lifelong Multi-Agent Path Finding to More Realistic Settings: Research Challenges and Opportunities. (Winner of 2023 League of Robot Runners)
  He Jiang, Yulun Zhang, Rishi Veerapaneni, Jiaoyang Li.
  Symposium on Combinatorial Search (SoCS), pages 234-242, 2024.
  
• Arbitrarily Scalable Environment Generators via Neural Cellular Automata.
  Yulun Zhang, Matthew C. Fontaine, Varun Bhatt, Stefanos Nikolaidis, Jiaoyang Li.
  Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS), pages 57212-57225, 2023.
  
• Multi-Robot Coordination and Layout Design for Automated Warehousing.
  Yulun Zhang, Matthew C. Fontaine, Varun Bhatt, Stefanos Nikolaidis, Jiaoyang Li.
  International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI), pages 5503-5511, 2023.
  

Masters Students

• He (Rivers) Jiang (Master of Science in Robotics, Class 2025)


He Jiang received a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science and Engineering from Shanghai Jiaotong University in 2017 and another Master's degree in Control Science and Engineering from Tsinghua University in 2020. Then he worked for more than 1 year at Hangzhou High-Tech Zone (Binjiang), China. He is interested in planning and his current research focuses on Multi-Agent Systems. Hopefully, he can enjoy his days at CMU and do some meaningful work. He is also interested in Soccer, Poker, Chinese Chess & Nintendo Switch, by the way.

Publications
• Deploying Ten Thousand Robots: Scalable Imitation Learning for Lifelong Multi-Agent Path Finding.
  He Jiang*, Yutong Wang*, Rishi Veerapaneni, Tanishq Harish Duhan, Guillaume Adrien Sartoretti, Jiaoyang Li.
  IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2025.
  
• Speedup Techniques for Switchable Temporal Plan Graph Optimization.
  He Jiang, Muhan Lin, Jiaoyang Li.
  AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), 2025.
  
• Online Guidance Graph Optimization for Lifelong Multi-Agent Path Finding.
  Hongzhi Zang*, Yulun Zhang*, He Jiang, Zhe Chen, Daniel Harabor, Peter J. Stuckey, Jiaoyang Li.
  AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), 2025.
  
• Guidance Graph Optimization for Lifelong Multi-Agent Path Finding.
  Yulun Zhang, He Jiang, Varun Bhatt, Stefanos Nikolaidis, Jiaoyang Li.
  International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI), pages 311-320, 2024.
  
• Scaling Lifelong Multi-Agent Path Finding to More Realistic Settings: Research Challenges and Opportunities. (Winner of 2023 League of Robot Runners)
  He Jiang, Yulun Zhang, Rishi Veerapaneni, Jiaoyang Li.
  Symposium on Combinatorial Search (SoCS), pages 234-242, 2024.
  

Undergraduate Students

• Cheng Qian (CS undergraduate, Class 2025)
• Yifan Su (CS undergraduate, Class 2025)

Publications
• Bidirectional Temporal Plan Graph: Enabling Switchable Passing Orders for More Efficient Multi-Agent Path Finding Plan Execution.
  Yifan Su, Rishi Veerapaneni, Jiaoyang Li.
  AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), pages 17559-17566, 2024.
  

Visitors

• Yutong Wang (Visiting PhD student)


Yutong received a B.Sc. from Shanghai University in 2020 and an M.Sc. from National University of Singapore in 2021. She is currently a third-year PhD student at National University of Singapore and began visiting Carnegie Mellon University in January 2024. Her research interests include Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning, Multi-Agent Path Finding and Multi-Robot Coordination.

Publications
• Deploying Ten Thousand Robots: Scalable Imitation Learning for Lifelong Multi-Agent Path Finding.
  He Jiang*, Yutong Wang*, Rishi Veerapaneni, Tanishq Harish Duhan, Guillaume Adrien Sartoretti, Jiaoyang Li.
  IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2025.
  
• LNS2+RL: Combining Multi-agent Reinforcement Learning with Large Neighborhood Search in Multi-agent Path Finding.
  Yutong Wang, Tanishq Duhan, Jiaoyang Li, Guillaume Adrien Sartoretti.
  AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), 2025.
  

Alumni

• Ying Feng (CS undergraduate, 2022-2023, now PhD student at MIT)

Publications
• A Real-Time Rescheduling Algorithm for Multi-robot Plan Execution.
  Ying Feng, Adittyo Paul, Zhe Chen, Jiaoyang Li.
  International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS), pages 201-209, 2024.
  A short version appeared at Symposium on Combinatorial Search (SoCS), pages 175-176, 2023.
  
• Adittyo Paul (CS undergraduate, 2022-2023)
Publications
• A Real-Time Rescheduling Algorithm for Multi-robot Plan Execution.
  Ying Feng, Adittyo Paul, Zhe Chen, Jiaoyang Li.
  International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS), pages 201-209, 2024.
  A short version appeared at Symposium on Combinatorial Search (SoCS), pages 175-176, 2023.
  
• Yimin Tang (Master of Science in Robotics, 2022-2023, now PhD student at USC)


Yimin received a B.Eng. in Computer Science from ShanghaiTech University in 2020 and worked as an SDE in Microsoft AzureStack Team for a year. His research is now focused on Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning and Multi-Agent Path Finding. He also participated in some publications related to grasping and human-computer interaction in ICRA and CHI. He is familiar with traditional data structures and algorithms and has several prizes in NOIP, NOI, and ICPC.

Publications
• ITA-ECBS: A Bounded-Suboptimal Algorithm for The Combined Target-Assignment and Path-Finding Problem.
  Yimin Tang, Sven Koenig, Jiaoyang Li.
  Symposium on Combinatorial Search (SoCS), pages 134-142, 2024.
  
• Solving Multi-Agent Target Assignment and Path Finding with a Single Constraint Tree. (Best Paper Finalist)
  Yimin Tang, Zhongqiang Ren, Jiaoyang Li, Katia Sycara.
  International Symposium on Multi-Robot and Multi-Agent Systems (MRS), pages 8-14, 2023.
  
• Fangji Wang (Visiting undergraduate student from Mechanical Engineering at Tsinghua University, 2023)
Publications
• Efficient Approximate Search for Multi-Objective Multi-Agent Path Finding.
  Fangji Wang*, Han Zhang*, Sven Koenig, Jiaoyang Li.
  International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS), pages 613-622, 2024.
  
• Hongzhi Zang (Visiting undergraduate student from Computer Science at Tsinghua University, 2024)
Publications
• Online Guidance Graph Optimization for Lifelong Multi-Agent Path Finding.
  Hongzhi Zang*, Yulun Zhang*, He Jiang, Zhe Chen, Daniel Harabor, Peter J. Stuckey, Jiaoyang Li.
  AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), 2025.