Max Robotics — Global Service Robot Directory + US Certification

About

Haoyu Xiong is a robotics researcher whose work spans robot learning, manipulation, and autonomous systems. His research focuses on enabling robots to acquire complex behaviors through natural, human-centered approaches rather than rigid mathematical specifications — a vision that bridges the gap between controlled laboratory settings and real-world deployment. Xiong's most influential contribution is the **Learning by Watching (LbW)** framework, introduced in 2021 and accumulating nearly 50 citations across related venues. This work demonstrated that robots could learn physical manipulation skills by observing human video demonstrations, dramatically reducing the need for hand-engineered task specifications and unlocking the potential to scale robot learning using vast repositories of human activity footage. Building on this foundation, his 2024 work on **Adaptive Mobile Manipulation for Articulated Objects** pushes beyond conventional pick-and-place tasks, tackling the far more challenging problem of deploying robots in open-world, unstructured environments like homes. He has also contributed to industrial robotics, with research on pipeline inspection robots addressing precise positioning and dynamic control stability. Collectively, Xiong's research reflects a commitment to making robots more capable, adaptable, and practically deployable — advancing the field toward truly generalist robotic systems.