Kai Lu
I am a Postdoctoral Research Assistant at Oxford Robotics Institute, Department of Engineering Science, University of Oxford, working with Prof. Ioannis Havoutis.
My current reserach focuses on generalizable learning-based mobile manipulation, with applications on household objects and everyday tasks.
Prior to this, I obtained my Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from the University of Oxford, supervised by
Prof. Andrew Markham and advised by Prof. Niki Trigoni FREng.
I received my B.E. degree with outstanding graduate honor in Automation from
Tsinghua University, where I was a student research assistant
in Computer Science, advised by
Prof. Huaping Liu. I was a student research intern at
Duke and UIUC, advised by Prof. Kris Hauser.
Collaboration / Research Intern:
⋅ Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs (MERL), Meta Research (FAIR, Habitat Team)
⋅ Oxford Robotics Institute (ORI), vLAR at Hong Kong PolyU (vLAR)
Sevice:
⋅ Associate Editor (AE): International Journal of Advanced Robotic Systems (IJARS)
⋅ Reviewer: NeurIPS, ICRA, IROS, CoRL, RA-L, ICLR, ICMR, BMVC, ICCV
Resume
Github
Google Scholar
LinkedIn
Email: kai.lu AT eng.ox.ac.uk / lukaiwork01 AT gmail.com
InteLiPlan: Interactive Lightweight LLM-Based Planner for Domestic Robot Autonomy
Kim Tien Ly, Kai Lu, Ioannis Havoutis
IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L)
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Learning Generalizable Manipulation Policy with Adapter-Based Parameter Fine-Tuning
Kai Lu, Kim Tien Ly, William Hebberd, Kaichen Zhou, Ioannis Havoutis, Andrew Markham
IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) 2024
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SpatialPIN: Enhancing Spatial Reasoning Capabilities of Vision-Language Models through Prompting and Interacting 3D Priors
Chenyang Ma, Kai Lu, Ta-Ying Cheng, Niki Trigoni, Andrew Markham
Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS) 2024
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Learning to Catch Reactive Objects with a Behavior Predictor
Kai Lu, Jia-Xing Zhong, Bo Yang, Bing Wang, Andrew Markham
IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2024
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Decoupling Skill Learning from Robotic Control for Generalizable Object Manipulation
Kai Lu, Bo Yang, Bing Wang, Andrew Markham
IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2023
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Semi-Empirical Simulation of Learned Force Response Models for Heterogeneous Elastic Objects
Yifan Zhu, Kai Lu, Kris Hauser
IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2020
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Deep Reinforcement Learning for Robotic Pushing and Picking in Cluttered Environment
Yuhong Deng*, Xiangfeng Guo*, Yixuan Wei*, Kai Lu*, Bin Fang, Di Guo, Huaping Liu, Fuchun Sun
*: co-first author, equal contribution
IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) 2019
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2020
Outstanding Graduate Honor, Department of Automation, Tsinghua University2019
Technological Innovation Scholarship, Department of Automation,Tsinghua University2019
Second Place, Adult-Size Technical Challenge, RoboCup 2019 Humanoid World Final2019
First Prize, The 37th Tsinghua Challenge Cup Competition2018
Champion, Robotic Innovation Contest, The 20th Chinese Robotics and Artificial Intelligence Competition2016
Tsinghua Leading Talent Program, Tsinghua University2015
First Prize, Chinese Physics Olympiad (CPhO) Provincial League2014
First Prize, Chinese Mathematical Olympiad (CMO) Provincial League2014
Bronze Medal, China Western Mathematical Olympiad (CWMO)2024
Associate Editor, International Journal of Advanced Robotic Systems (IJARS)2024
Reviewer, ICRA 2025, ICLR 20252023
Reviewer, NeurIPS 2023, ICLR 2024, ICRA 20242026
Started my Postdoc at ORI, Dept of EngSci at Oxford.2025
Obtained my Ph.D degree in Computer Science at Oxford.2025
Completed my intership at Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs in Boston.2024
Submitted my thesis "Embodied Visual Control Policy Learning for Robotic Mobile Manipulation"!2024
Our paper SpatialPIN got accepted into NeurIPS 2024!2024
Our paper GenRob got accepted into IROS 2024!2024
Our paper DynCatch got accepted into ICRA 2024!2023
Successfully defended my Confirmation of Status viva (Examiners: Prof. Niki Trigoni, Prof. Ioannis Havoutis).2023
Our paper DecoupSkill got accepted into ICRA 2023!2022
Started my internship at vLAR group, Hong Kong Polytechnique University.2022
Successfully defended my Transfer of Status viva (Examiners: Prof. Niki Trigoni, Prof. Alessandro Abate).2021
Completed three assessment work for Transfer (one hardest-level course, one survey, and one term paper).2020
Started my D.Phil. journey at University of Oxford.2020
Received my B.Eng. degree with honor from Tsinghua University.