Jingfan Tang

I'm an undergraduate student at Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China, where I work in Robotics Autonomy and Planning Lab with Prof. Zhongqiang (Richard) Ren. Currently I am also a student intern at Carnegie Mellon University, advised by Prof. Ji Zhang.

I am working on planning and robot autonomy. I develop solvers for routing problems and build robotics systems in simulation and the real world. Also, I leverage vision language models to enhance decision-making.

I am actively seeking a Ph.D position in robotics, computer science, or related fields starting in Fall 2027.

Email / Scholar / Github / CV

News

[Aug 2026] Our paper RPV* was accepted to the International Symposium on Robotics Research (ISRR 2026).

[Apr 2026] We are organizing CMU-VLN-Challenge. Please check our website.

[Jan 2026] I began my exchange at Carnegie Mellon University and joined Prof. Ji Zhang's lab.

[Sep 2025] Our paper HEHA was accepted to IEEE International Symposium on Multi-Robot and Multi-Agent Systems (MRS 2025) as a poster paper.

[Feb 2025] I joined the Robotics Autonomy and Planning Lab, advised by Prof. Zhongqiang (Richard) Ren.

Selected Research Projects

My research interests lie at the intersection of algorithmic robotics and machine intelligence. I am dedicated to designing efficient search and optimization-based algorithms, aiming to bridge the gap between classical methods and modern learning-based approaches to achieve provably safe and intelligent robot autonomy.

	Multi-robot Routing with Probabilistic Terminals for Cooperative Target Search Yunpeng Lyu, Jingfan Tang, Zhongqiang Ren In submission to ICRA, 2027 Introducing the multi-robot Hamiltonian Path Problem with Probabilistic Terminals (MHPP-PT) to minimize the team's expected time to find a target, with efficient optimal (MRPT) and bounded suboptimal solvers (F-MRPT).
	Goal2Pixel: Grounding Goals to Pixels for Vision-Language Navigation Muyi Bao, Yuxin Cai, Hang Xu, Zongtai Li, Jinxi He, Jingfan Tang, Chen Lv, Ji Zhang, Yaqi Xie, Wenshan Wang In submission to ICRA, 2027 paper / demo Reformulating vision-language navigation as navigable pixel grounding, and predicting a visible pixel in the image plane that is back-projected into a 3D waypoint for navigation.
	RPV: Routing with Probabilistic Vertices and Its Use in Autonomous Exploration Jingfan Tang, Ruizhi Deng, Yunpeng Lyu, Shizhe Zhao, Zhongqiang Ren ISRR, 2026 paper to be released / solver demo / exploration demo Introducing the Routing with Probabilistic Vertices (RPV) to model map prediction uncertainty during exploration, with efficient optimal (RPV) and bounded suboptimal solvers (F-RPV*).
	HEHA: Bounded Suboptimal Planning for Constrained Routing and Its Use in Heterogeneous Multi-Robot Exploration of Unknown Environments Longrui Yang^†, Yiyu Wang^†, Jingfan Tang^†, Yunpeng Lyu, Shizhe Zhao, Chao Cao, Zhongqiang Ren ^† Equal contribution MRS Poster Paper, 2025 In submission to TRO, 2026 paper / demo Considering the path planning problem for autonomous exploration of an unknown environment using multiple heterogeneous robots and solving with search-based method.

Ongoing Projects

	Adaptive Exploration via Probabilistic Planning and Online Map Prediction IROS Search Algorithms for Robot Learning Workshop, 2026 Combining probabilistic planning over predicted maps with online map prediction, allowing the robot to adapt its exploration behavior as the predicted map is refined.
	Language-Instructed Object Navigation Building a benchmark for everyday human navigation tasks that bridges coarse-grained object navigation and fine-grained instruction following.
	Agentic Skill Library Leveraging an LLM reasoner for long-horizon task planning over a skill graph, with fallback mechanisms.
	Fast Search Algorithm for the Multi-Objective Traveling Salesman Problem Adopting a data structure that employs a weaker dominance rule in exchange for much faster dominance checks, accelerating multi-objective search.

Miscellanea

Teaching

Teaching Assistant, ECE2810J (Algorithm & Programming Design), Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Summer 2026.
Teaching Assistant, MATH2550J (Multivariate Calculus), Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Summer 2025.
Teaching Assistant, MATH2030J (Discrete Mathematics), Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Fall 2024.

Services

Reviewer of IROS 2026.
Reviewer for Autonomous Robots 2026.
Organizer of CMU-VLN-Challenge 2026.

Thanks to Jon Barron for the website template.