Zhengtong Xu

Zhengtong Xu 徐政通

I'm a third-year PhD candidate at Purdue University, advised by Professor Yu She. I was a recipient of the 2025 Magoon Graduate Student Research Excellence Award at Purdue University (awarded to only 25 PhD students across the entire Purdue College of Engineering).

I received my Bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering at Huazhong University of Science and Technology.

G. Scholar / Twitter / Github / LinkedIn

News

[Nov. 2024] I have passed my PhD preliminary exam and officially become a PhD candidate
[Sep. 2024] One paper accepted by IEEE T-RO

Research

* indicates equal contribution.

My research aims to design learning algorithms for robotic agents, enabling them to perform everyday manipulation tasks with human-level proficiency. To this end, I am currently focusing on hierarchical multimodal robot learning. Specifically, my research explores:

1. Integrating visual, 3D, and tactile modalities for robot learning.
2. Combining differentiable optimization and learning for interpretable, reactive low-level robot policies.
3. Deploying pretrained vision-language models for high-level reasoning and planning.

	LeTac-MPC: Learning Model Predictive Control for Tactile-reactive Grasping Zhengtong Xu, Yu She IEEE Transactions on Robotics (T-RO), 2024 arXiv / video / code / bibtex @article{xu2024letac, author={Xu, Zhengtong and She, Yu}, journal={IEEE Transactions on Robotics}, title={{LeTac-MPC}: Learning Model Predictive Control for Tactile-Reactive Grasping}, year={2024}, volume={40}, number={}, pages={4376-4395}, doi={10.1109/TRO.2024.3463470} } Close A generalizable end-to-end tactile-reactive grasping controller with differentiable MPC, combining learning and model-based approaches.
	DiffOG: Differentiable Policy Trajectory Optimization with Generalizability Zhengtong Xu, Zichen Miao, Qiang Qiu, Zhe Zhang, Yu She Under Review, 2025 arXiv / video / code(soon) / bibtex @misc{xu2025diffog, title={{DiffOG}: Differentiable Policy Trajectory Optimization with Generalizability}, author={Zhengtong Xu and Zichen Miao and Qiang Qiu and Zhe Zhang and Yu She}, year={2025}, eprint={2504.13807}, archivePrefix={arXiv}, primaryClass={cs.RO}, url={https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.13807}, } Close DiffOG introduces a transformer-based differentiable trajectory optimization framework for action refinement in imitation learning.
	UniT: Data Efficient Tactile Representation with Generalization to Unseen Objects Zhengtong Xu, Raghava Uppuluri, Xinwei Zhang, Cael Fitch, Philip Glen Crandall, Wan Shou, Dongyi Wang, Yu She IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L), 2025 website / arXiv / video / code / bibtex @misc{xu2025unit, title={{UniT}: Data Efficient Tactile Representation with Generalization to Unseen Objects}, author={Zhengtong Xu and Raghava Uppuluri and Xinwei Zhang and Cael Fitch and Philip Glen Crandall and Wan Shou and Dongyi Wang and Yu She}, year={2025}, eprint={2408.06481}, archivePrefix={arXiv}, primaryClass={cs.RO}, url={https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.06481}, } Close Learn a tactile representation with generalizability only by a single simple object.
	Safe Human-Robot Collaboration with Risk-tunable Control Barrier Functions Vipul K. Sharma, Pokuang Zhou, Zhengtong Xu, Yu She, S. Sivaranjani Under Review*, 2025 arXiv(soon) / video(soon) We address safety in human-robot collaboration with uncertain human positions by formulating a chance-constrained problem using uncertain control barrier functions.
	VILP: Imitation Learning with Latent Video Planning Zhengtong Xu, Qiang Qiu, Yu She IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L), 2025 arXiv / video / code / bibtex @misc{xu2025vilp, title={VILP: Imitation Learning with Latent Video Planning}, author={Zhengtong Xu and Qiang Qiu and Yu She}, year={2025}, eprint={2502.01784}, archivePrefix={arXiv}, primaryClass={cs.RO}, url={https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.01784}, } Close VILP integrates the video generation model into policies, enabling the representation of multi-modal action distributions while reducing reliance on extensive high-quality robot action data.
	LeTO: Learning Constrained Visuomotor Policy with Differentiable Trajectory Optimization Zhengtong Xu, Yu She IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering (T-ASE), 2024 arXiv / video / code / bibtex @article{xu2024leto, title={LeTO: Learning Constrained Visuomotor Policy with Differentiable Trajectory Optimization}, author={Xu, Zhengtong and She, Yu}, journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:2401.17500}, year={2024} } Close LeTO is a "gray box" method which marries optimization-based safety and interpretability with representational abilities of neural networks.
	VisTac: Toward a Unified Multimodal Sensing Finger for Robotic Manipulation Sheeraz Athar^, Gaurav Patel^, Zhengtong Xu, Qiang Qiu, Yu She IEEE Sensors Journal, 2023 paper / video / bibtex @article{athar2023vistac, title={Vistac towards a unified multi-modal sensing finger for robotic manipulation}, author={Athar, Sheeraz and Patel, Gaurav and Xu, Zhengtong and Qiu, Qiang and She, Yu}, journal={IEEE Sensors Journal}, year={2023}, publisher={IEEE} } Close VisTac seamlessly combines high-resolution tactile and visual perception in a single unified device.

Awards

Magoon Graduate Student Research Excellence Award, Purdue University, 2025
Dr. Theodore J. and Isabel M. Williams Fellowship, Purdue University, 2022
Chinese National Scholarship, Ministry of Education of China, 2017

Reviewer Service

Conference on Robot Learning (CoRL), 2025
IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L), 2025
IEEE Transactions on Robotics (T-RO), 2024
IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2024

Teaching

Vertically Integrated Projects (VIP)-GE Robotics and Autonomous Systems, Grad Mentor, Spring 2024/Fall 2023/Summer 2023
IE 474-Industrial Control Systems, Teaching Assistant, Fall 2022

Website template from Jon Barron's website.