Research
I am a Postdoctoral Researcher in the IDRA Research Group at Università di Trento (UniTN), supervised by Prof. Daniele Fontanelli. My current research focuses on optimization for robotics and human robot collaboration, combining learning and model-based methods to enable more capable and reliable autonomy. I obtained my Ph.D. in Mechanical and Automation Engineering from The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) in 2024, advised by Prof. Ben M. Chen, and my B.Eng. in Automation from the University of Science and Technology of China in 2020.
News
- February 2026 🎉 Zanxi's Paper got accepted at CVPR 2026: "StruXLIP: Enhancing Vision-Language Models with Multimodal Structural Cues." [link]
- January 2026 🎉 My paper got accepted at ICLR 2026: "Learning to Solve Orienteering Problem with Time Windows and Variable Profits." Huge thank to my professors! [project page]
- October 2025 📄 My paper got accepted in Control Engineering Practice: "Motion-force control of mobile manipulators via extended uncertainty and disturbance estimation." Many thanks to Prof. Qinyuan Ren and Ben M. Chen!! [link]
- May 2025 🏆 We got Third Prize in Robotwin dual-arm Collaboration Challenge (CVPR 2025). [certificate]
- Aug 2024 🏆 Our work was selected as a finalist for the Best Paper Award CIS-RAM 2024. [certificate]
- June 2024 I successfully defended my PhD dissertation and received my PhD degree from CUHK!
Selected Publications
- S. Gao, Z. Ruan, P. Floor, M. Roveri, L. Palopoli, and D. Fontanelli, “Learning to Solve Orienteering Problem with Time Windows and Variable Profits,” International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR), 2026. project page
- S. Gao, Y. Zhu, W. Ding, M. Cheng, Q. Ren, and Ben M. Chen, “Motion-force control of mobile manipulators via extended uncertainty and disturbance estimation,” Control Engineering Practice, vol. 167, pp. 106650, 2026. link
- S. Gao and Z. Kan, “Effective Dynamic Coverage Control for Heterogeneous Driftless Control Affine Systems,” in IEEE Control Systems Letters, vol. 5, no. 6, pp. 2018-2023, Dec. 2021. (Joint submission to IEEE CSL and American control conference (ACC)). href
Awards
- Third Prize, Robotwin dual-arm Collaboration Challenge, CVPR 2025 (certificate)
- Best paper Finalist, CIS-RAM 2024 (certificate)
Teaching
- Teaching Assistant in CUHK
- MAEG5725: Control and Industrial Automation (Spring 2024)
Service
- Reviewer for Unmanned Systems, Journal of Bionic Engineering, Frontiers of Information Technology & Electronic Engineering.
- Cochair for CIS-RAM 2024
- Program Committe for I-RIM 3D 2025