We study heterogeneous multi-robot systems as urban-scale societies. From humanoids, quadrupeds, drones, and wheeled platforms to self-reconfigurable modular robots, these morphologies do not share sensory modalities, movement grammars, or environmental representations—yet together they must form a working/living social order. Our central question is how coordination, role differentiation, and collective norms arise across such morphological asymmetry. We examine this through dynamics: the collective behaviors that emerge from coupled sensorimotor loops, and the ways in which the physical substrates of perception, action, and communication shape—or disrupt—the social patterns they sustain.

Principal Investigator
Yuan Gao

Yuan Gao

Shenzhen Institute of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics
The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen

Co-Principal Investigator
Xi Chen

Xi Chen

Beijing Institute for General Artificial Intelligence

A single robot is a philosophy embodied. A heterogeneous multi-robot society is where irreconcilable philosophies find sustenance.
Lab Members
Lab Managers & Postdocs
Lin Wang
Lin Wang Project Manager
Supervising/Co-advising Ph.D. Students
Haixu Zhang
Haixu Zhang Ph.D. Student

Haixu Zhang does not program behaviors; he writes reward landscapes, and lets the physics of failure teach the rest.

Wenqiang Lai
Wenqiang Lai Ph.D. Student

Wenqiang Lai's work focuses on enhancing the collective resilience of heterogeneous multi-robot systems with embodied agents.

Baozhe Zhang
Baozhe Zhang Ph.D. Student baozhezhang.com

Baozhe Zhang's research interests focus on robot motion planning, differentiable trajectory optimization, differentiable physics simulation, and reinforcement learning.

Peng Ju
Peng Ju Ph.D. Student

Peng Ju's research focuses on cloud–edge–end co-evolutionary heterogeneous multi-robot systems for city-scale, long-duration tasks, with emphasis on the evolution of large language models for task decomposition and collaborative decision-making, as well as the evolution of robot capabilities.

Hongyang Lei
Hongyang Lei Ph.D. Student

Hongyang Lei's research focuses on world models for heterogeneous embodied multi-agent systems.

Yuming Liu
Yuming Liu Ph.D. Student yumingliu.com

Yuming Liu focuses on providing heterogeneous robots with a unified interface for planning and perception.

Zhiqian Wu
Zhiqian Wu Visiting Ph.D. Student

Zhiqian Wu's research focuses on heterogeneous multi-robot systems, with emphasis on knowledge acquisition and transfer.

Lab Assistants
Qianqian Lu
Qianqian Lu Lab HR & Admin Assistant
Contact & Location

For collaboration, visiting, or research inquiries, please reach out via the contact page.

Location

Shenzhen, China

Affiliation

CUHK(SZ)

Shenzhen Institute of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics

Status

Recruiting

Postdocs and research assistants are welcome to apply.