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
I'm currently a second-year master student in Robotics and graduate research intern at Penn GRASP Lab, advised by Prof. Nadia Figueroa. Before Penn, I completed my undergraduate studies at Southeast University and spent time as an exchange student at UC San Diego.
My research sits at the intersection of control theory, machine 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'd like to learn more about my background and work, please feel free to check my CV. If you're interested in collaborating or have any questions, don't hesitate to reach out by email. I'd love to hear from you.
Unsure how to pronounce my name? Zizhe sounds like Dzuh-JUH and Zhang sounds like Jahng.
News
2026.01.31VPP-TC and Flow with the Force Field accepted to ICRA 2026; VLMgineer accepted to ICLR 2026.
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
Listed in reverse chronological order. The full publication list is here.
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
// RESEARCH EXPERIENCE
Graduate Research Assistant
Figueroa Robotics Lab @ GRASP
Advised by Prof. Nadia Figueroa
2024.11 - Present
Undergraduate Research Assistant
Robotic Perception and Control Lab
Advised by Prof. Yuan Yang
2023.12 - 2024.8
Miscellaneous
CS2 and Football Manager enthusiast. Former varsity soccer player. Huge fan of Leicester City and Inter Milan.