Anxing Xiao

My research interests lie in developing both general-purpose algorithms and specialized autonomous systems for service robots, including planning, human-robot interaction, and service robot design. I aim to bridge the gap between robotics research and its real-world applications in socially aware scenarios.

My long-term research goal is to develop deployable service robotic systems capable of operating in open-world environments. I define the open world as one characterized by (1) natural and unconstrained human behavior, (2) incomplete environmental knowledge at both the semantic and geometric levels, and (3) unknown environmental structures populated with novel objects.

To tackle the challenges of open-world operation, I adopt the system design grounded in compositionality and modularity. I explore structured representations that link semantic concepts with their grounding in the physical world. At the low level, I develop robust navigation and manipulation systems that passively tolerate unforeseen objects and environments in a passive manner. At the high level, I design systems and algorithms that actively expand the robot's representations and models. I also incorporate human presence to interact with both high-level and low-level representations.