Wanruo Zhang

University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Peking University

Papers

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About

Wanruo Zhang is a robotics researcher whose work sits at the intersection of surgical robotics and safe human-robot interaction. Her primary research areas include motion prediction for robot-assisted surgery and crowd navigation for mobile robots. In her highly cited 2022 paper "Motion Prediction of Beating Heart Using Spatio-Temporal LSTM" (23 citations), Zhang introduced a novel approach that goes beyond conventional temporal-only prediction models. By incorporating spatio-temporal correlations, her LSTM-based method significantly improves the accuracy and safety of surgical robots operating on a beating heart—a critical advancement for robot-assisted cardiac procedures. Building on this, her 2023 work "SafeCrowdNav: safety evaluation of robot crowd navigation in complex scenes" (8 citations) tackles the equally challenging problem of mobile robots navigating dense crowds. Using deep reinforcement learning, Zhang's framework enables robots to exhibit active, foresighted behaviors while understanding complex crowd dynamics. Together, these contributions demonstrate her dual focus on precision in high-stakes medical environments and robust safety in everyday human spaces, marking her as an emerging leader in both surgical and social robotics.