Lei Yao

Ray Lei Yao

I am a PhD student in the Department of Electrical and Eletronic Engineering at Hong Kong Polytechnic University, supervised by Prof. Lap-Pui Chau (IEEE Fellow) and Dr. Yi Wang.

I recieved my BSc and MRes in School of Mechanical Science and Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology advised by Prof. Youping Chen in 2020 and 2023, respectively. I served as a research intern in the Robotics X Lab at Tencent from May. to Oct. 2022.

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News

[Apr. 2024] 🎉 Two paper about 3D vision are acceptted by IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Vehicles..

[Oct. 2023] 🎉 One paper about robot compliance control is acceptted by ROBIO 2023.

[Oct. 2023] 🎉 One paper about 3D object detection is acceptted by Image and Vision Computing.

[Aug. 2023] 🎉 I join JC STEM Lab of ML & CV at PolyU as a PhD student.

Research

My current research interests lie in the intersection of 3D Vision and Visual Representation for Embodied AI, with particular interests in 3D scene understanding, sample-efficient and generalizable manipulation policy learning. My research objective is to bulid an embodied agent which has the ability to efficiently perceive and interact with complex real-world environment. Previously, I have worked on robot Compliance control and Nonprehensile manipulation.

	A Survey of Embodied Learning for Object-Centric Robotic Manipulation Ying Zheng, Lei Yao, Yuejiao Su, Yi Zhang, Yi Wang, Sicheng Zhao, Yiyi Zhang, Lap-Pui Chau arxiv / code arXiv preprint, 2024 We provide a comprehensive survey of embodied perceptual learning, embodied policy learning, and embodied task-oriented learning
	SGIFormer: Semantic-guided and Geometric-enhanced Interleaving Transformer for 3D Instance Segmentation Lei Yao, Yi Wang, Moyun Liu, Lap-Pui Chau project page / arxiv / demo / code arXiv preprint, 2024 We introduce SGIFormer for 3D instance segmentation, which combines semantic-guided query initialization and geometric-enhanced interleaving transformer.
	Towards Better Unguided Depth Completion via Cross-Modality Knowledge Distillation in the Frequency Domain Moyun Liu, Bing Chen†, Youping Chen, Jingming Xie, Lei Yao†, Yang Zhang, Qin Hu, Jiawei Du, Joey Tianyi Zhou paper IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Vehicles (TIV), 2024 We analyze the contribution of camera image for depth completion and propose a better unguided depth completion framework.
	Evaluation of Range Sensing-based Place Recognition for Long-term Urban Localization Weixin Ma, Huan Yin, Lei Yao, Yuxiang Sun, Zhongqing Su paper / code IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Vehicles (TIV), 2024 We conduct a comprehensive evaluation study on several SOTA range sensing-based place recognition methods on the Borease dataset.
	A Data-Driven Phantom Zeros Prediction Algorithm for Traction Force Sensor in Kinesthetic Demonstration Lei Yao, Bing Chen, Moyun Liu, Jingming Xie, Youping Chen, Lei He paper ROBIO, 2023 (Oral) We model and predict phantom zeros based on a GA-optimized NN during kinesthetic demonstration.
	BF3D: Bi-directional fusion 3D detector with semantic sampling and geometric mapping Yijie Zhu, Jingming Xie, Moyun Liu, Lei Yao, Youping Chen paper / code Image and Vision Computing, 2023 We propose an end-to-end detector termed BF3Dintegrating with semantic sampling and geometric point-image mapping.
	An Integrated Compensation Method for the Force Disturbance of a Six-Axis Force Sensor in Complex Manufacturing Scenarios Lei Yao, Qingguang Gao, Dailin Zhang, Wanpeng Zhang, Youping Chen paper Sensor, 2021 We propose an integrated compensation method to eliminate the disturbances of zero drift, system error, and gravity of robot end-effector.

Services

TA of EIE546 Video Technology in PolyU, 2023Fall, 2024Fall

TA of EIE522 Pattern Recognition: Theory and Applications in PolyU, 2024Spring

TA of EIE4100 Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition in PolyU, 2024Fall

Education

	Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) 2023.08 - Present PhD Student , Department of Electrical and Eletronic Engineering Supervisors: Prof. Lap-Pui Chau, Dr. Yi Wang
	Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST) 2020.9 - 2023.6 Master Student, School of Mechanical Science and Engineering Supervisor: Prof. Youping Chen
	Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST) 2016.9 - 2020.6 Undergraduate Student, School of Mechanical Science and Engineering Supervisor: Prof. Youping Chen

Experience

	Tencent Robotics X Lab 2022.05 - 2022.10 Research Intern, Robot Dynamic Nonprehensile Manipulation Leader: Dr. Yu Zheng
	Imperial College London 2019.1 - 2019.2 Visiting Student, Hamlyn Centre

Selected Awards and Honors

2023: Hong Kong PolyU Presidental PhD Fellowship (PPPFS)

2023 & 2020: Outstanding Graduate of HUST

2021: National Scholarship (2%, ¥20000)

2021: Merit Graduate Student of HUST

2021 & 2020: First-class Graduate School Fellowship (¥10000)

2019: GoerTek Scholarship (Sponsored by GoerTek Co., Ltd. ¥8000)

2019: National Encouragement Scholarship

2019 & 2017: Outstanding Student Leadership Award of HUST