Ruochu Yang

Ruochu Yang

I am an Applied Scientist at Amazon SPX AI Lab. I hold a PhD degree at Georgia Tech advised by Prof. Fumin Zhang and Prof. Yorai Wardi , and a Bachelor degree at Nankai University advised by Prof. Jing Yuan. My research focuses on Robotics, Agentic AI, and Reinforcement Learning.

ruochuyang@gmail.com / Google Scholar / LinkedIn

News

[May, 2026]  Passed my PhD Dissertation Defense at Georgia Tech, Atlanta, USA
[Nov, 2025]  Started as Applied Scientist at Amazon SPX AI Lab, Seattle, USA
[May, 2025]  Started as Applied Scientist Intern at Amazon AGI, Seattle, USA
[Feb, 2025]  Passed my PhD Proposal at Georgia Tech, Atlanta, USA
[May, 2024]  Started as Applied Scientist Intern at Amazon AGI, Seattle, USA
[Feb, 2021]  Started as Software Engineering Intern at Cruise, San Francisco, USA

Publications
	Interleaved POMDP Planning for Multi-Object Search in Unknown Multi-Room Household Environments Ruochu Yang, Ziyi Xia, Huibo Zhang, Yatong Han, Yiming Zhao, Yingke Li, Fumin Zhang, Yorai Wardi, Mengxue Hou arXiv, accepted at IROS 2026 paper / website
	Interleaved LLM and Motion Planning for Generalized Multi-Object Collection in Large Scene Graphs Ruochu Yang, Yu Zhou, Fumin Zhang, Mengxue Hou International Conference on Ubiquitous Robots (UR), 2026 paper / code / website
	On Retrieval of Long Audios with Complex Text Queries Ruochu Yang, Milind Rao, Harshavardhan Sundar, Anirudh Raju, Aparna Khare, Srinath Tankasala, Di He, Venkatesh Ravichandran Proc. Interspeech, 2025 paper / code / website
	Active Perception for Underwater Vehicle Navigation based on Belief Space Planning Zongyao Liu, Ruochu Yang, Mengxue Hou IEEE OCEANS Great Lakes, 2025 paper
	An Open-source Underwater Robotics Platform for Aquatic Research & Exploration Scott Mayberry, Jinzhi Cai, Ruochu Yang, Junkai Wang, Fumin Zhang HardwareX, 2025 paper / code
	Flow Field Estimation in Underwater Vehicle Navigation Using Sporadic Image Observations Yu Zhou, Ruochu Yang, Mengxue Hou International Conference on Ubiquitous Robots (UR), 2025 paper
	OceanPlan: Hierarchical Planning and Replanning for Natural Language AUV Piloting in Large-Scale Unexplored Ocean Environments Ruochu Yang, Fumin Zhang, Mengxue Hou International Conference on Underwater Networks & Systems (WUWNet), 2024 paper / website
	OceanChat: Piloting Autonomous Underwater Vehicles in Natural Language Ruochu Yang, Mengxue Hou, Junkai Wang, Fumin Zhang arXiv, 2023 paper / website
	Real-time Autonomous Glider Navigation Software Ruochu Yang, Mengxue Hou, Chad Lembke, Catherine Edwards, Fumin Zhang IEEE OCEANS Limerick, 2023 paper / website
	General Anomaly Detection of Underwater Gliders Validated by Large-scale Deployment Datasets Ruochu Yang, Chad Lembke, Fumin Zhang, Catherine Edwards, Fumin Zhang IEEE OCEANS Gulf Coast, 2023 paper
	Anomaly Detection of Underwater Gliders Verified by Deployment Data Ruochu Yang, Mengxue Hou, Chda Lembke, Catherine Edwards, Fumin Zhang IEEE Underwater Technology (UT), 2023 paper
	A Flexible Rope Crane Experiment System Ruochu Yang, Can Jiang, Yucheng Miao, Jin Ma, Xiaoyang Zhang, Tong Yang, Ning Sun Applications of Modelling and Simulation, 2019 paper

Awards

Gong Neng Scholarship (rank 10%) — Nankai University, 2019
Excellent Undergraduate of the College of Artificial Intelligence (rank 10%) — Nankai University, 2018
College First Prize for Undergraduate Innovation Project (rank 1%) — Nankai University, 2017

Academic Service

Conference Reviewer — IROS, ICRA, ACC
Journal Reviewer — Journal of Intelligent & Robotic Systems, IEEE Journal of Oceanic Engineering, IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering
Teaching Assistant — Georgia Tech VIP Underwater Robotics (Fall 2021), Georgia Tech Digital Design Lab (Fall 2025)

Fun Facts

Basketball, Tennis, Movie