Viability-Preserving Passive Torque Control
Zizhe Zhang*, Yicong Wang*, Zhiquan Zhang, Tianyu Li, and Nadia Figueroa
ICRA 2026Best Contribution Award, E-RLC@IROS '25Best Student Paper Award, Building Safe Robots@IROS '25
Zizhe Zhang
张子哲
Robotics master student and research intern at Penn GRASP Lab, advised by Prof. Nadia Figueroa. My research sits at the intersection of control theory, robot learning, and human-robot interaction. I want to make robots that are not only capable but genuinely trustworthy - systems you'd feel comfortable having in your home.
If you would like to know more, please check my CV.
News
2026.01.31VPP-TC and Flow with the Force Field accepted to ICRA 2026; VLMgineer accepted to ICLR 2026.
2025.10.24VPP-TC received Best Contribution Award (1st Prize) at IROS Workshop on E-RLC.
2025.10.20VPP-TC received Best Student Paper Award at IROS Workshop on Building Safe Robots.
2025.06.21Serving as volunteer at RSS 2025 in Los Angeles.
2025.05.31Joined DexLab at Duke University as Visiting Scholar.
2025.02.10First journal paper accepted to IEEE RA-L.
Selected Publications
Flow with the Force Field: Learning 3D Compliant Flow Matching Policies
Tianyu Li*, Yihan Li*, Zizhe Zhang, and Nadia Figueroa
ICRA 2026
VLMgineer: Vision Language Models as Robotic Toolsmiths
George J. Gao*, Tianyu Li*, Junyao Shi, Zizhe Zhang†, Yihan Li†, Nadia Figueroa, and Dinesh Jayaraman
ICLR 2026Oral Spotlight, Robot Hardware-Aware Intelligence@RSS '25
Image-Based Visual Servoing for Enhanced Cooperation of Dual-Arm Manipulation
Zizhe Zhang, Yuan Yang, Wenqiang Zuo, Guangming Song, Aiguo Song, and Yang Shi
RA-L 2025
Experience & Service
// EDUCATION & EXPERIENCE
University of Pennsylvania
M.S.E. Robotics, GRASP Lab
2024 - 2026
Duke University
Visiting Scholar, DexLab
Summer 2025
Southeast University
B.E. Measuring Control Technology & Instruments
2020 - 2024
Miscellaneous
CS2 and Football Manager enthusiast. Former varsity soccer player. Huge fan of Leicester City and Inter Milan.