Chen Wang

Assistant Professor

I am an Assistant Professor at the Computer Science and Engineering (CSE), University at Buffalo (UB).

At the intersection of perception, spatial reasoning, and decision-making, we are committed to advancing mobile robots toward human-level autonomy by developing algorithms and systems that can efficiently and robustly:

  • Perceive and interpret various sensory inputs such as images, point clouds, and proprioceptive data.
  • Integrate neural and symbolic memory representations to capture spatial common sense and semantic knowledge.
  • Reason, plan, and act in real time to navigate in, interact with, and adapt within unstructured and dynamic environments.

A central paradigm we advocate is imperative learning (IL), a unified neuro-symbolic learning framework for robot autonomy that promotes data-efficient learning through structured reasoning. IL is inherently self-supervised, modular, and end-to-end learnable with symbolic reasoning grounded in physical laws and logical rules.

We are also leading the development of PyPose, an open-source library for differentiable robotics on manifolds. Notably, PyPose has accumulated over 160,000 downloads in 2025, according to PyPi Stats.

Experience & Education

  • Assistant Professor, University at Buffalo (UB), USA, 2022 - Present
  • Postdoctoral Fellow, Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, USA, 2019 - 2022
  • Ph.D., Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore, 2014 - 2019
  • Bachelor, Beijing Institute of Technology (BIT), China, 2010 - 2014

Awards

  • UB CSE Excellence in Research Award, 2024
  • Sony Research Award, 2024
  • Cisco Research Award, 2023

Services

Information

Selected Publications

Selected publications highlighting key contributions in neuro-symbolic robot autonomy, including framework development, system design, and foundations in learning and representation. Full publication list is here.

Representative Works

  1. Cover for Imperative Learning: A Self-supervised Neuro-Symbolic Learning Framework for Robot Autonomy
    Imperative Learning: A Self-supervised Neuro-Symbolic Learning Framework for Robot Autonomy.
    Chen Wang, Kaiyi Ji, Junyi Geng, Zhongqiang Ren, Taimeng Fu, Fan Yang, Yifan Guo, Haonan He, Xiangyu Chen, Zitong Zhan, Qiwei Du, Shaoshu Su, Bowen Li, Yuheng Qiu, Yi Du, Qihang Li, Yifan Yang, Xiao Lin, Zhipeng Zhao.
    International Journal of Robotics Research (IJRR), 2025.
    Unifying robot autonomy via neuro-symbolic learning
  2. Resilient Odometry via Hierarchical Adaptation.
    Shibo Zhao, Sifan Zhou, Yuchen Zhang, Ji Zhang, Chen Wang, Wenshan Wang, Sebastian Scherer.
    Science Robotics, vol. 10, no. 109, 2025.
    Top featured article in Science Robotics; Imperative learning enables all-weather resiliency; Exhibiting only 0.000067 (0.2m / 3km) drift without loop closure
  3. Cover for PyPose: A Library for Robot Learning with Physics-based Optimization
    PyPose: A Library for Robot Learning with Physics-based Optimization.
    Chen Wang, Dasong Gao, Kuan Xu, Junyi Geng, Yaoyu Hu, Yuheng Qiu, Bowen Li, Fan Yang, Brady Moon, Abhinav Pandey, Aryan, Jiahe Xu, Tianhao Wu, Haonan He, Daning Huang, Zhongqiang Ren, Shibo Zhao, Taimeng Fu, Pranay Reddy, Xiao Lin, Wenshan Wang, Jingnan Shi, Rajat Talak, Kun Cao, Yi Du, Han Wang, Huai Yu, Shanzhao Wang, Siyu Chen, Ananth Kashyap, Rohan Bandaru, Karthik Dantu, Jiajun Wu, Lihua Xie, Luca Carlone, Marco Hutter, Sebastian Scherer.
    IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), pp. 22024–22034, 2023.
    Python library accumulated over 160,000 downloads in 2025

Neuro-Symbolic Robot Autonomy

  1. Fast Task Planning with Neuro-Symbolic Relaxation.
    Qiwei Du, Bowen Li, Yi Du, Shaoshu Su, Taimeng Fu, Zitong Zhan, Zhipeng Zhao, Chen Wang.
    IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L), vol. 11, no. 3, pp. 3684–3691, 2026.
    An elegant real-world demonstration of interactive navigation
  2. Cover for iWalker: Imperative Visual Planning for Walking Humanoid Robot
    iWalker: Imperative Visual Planning for Walking Humanoid Robot.
    Xiao Lin, Yuhao Huang, Taimeng Fu, Xiaobin Xiong, Chen Wang.
    IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), pp. 2865–2872, 2025.
    Best Workshop Paper Award; Enabling humanoid walking via self-supervised footstep planning
  3. Cover for PhysORD: A Neuro-Symbolic Approach for Physics-infused Motion Prediction in Off-road Driving
    PhysORD: A Neuro-Symbolic Approach for Physics-infused Motion Prediction in Off-road Driving.
    Zhipeng Zhao, Bowen Li, Yi Du, Taimeng Fu, Chen Wang.
    IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), pp. 11670–11677, 2024.
    Neuro-symbolic learning pushes SOTA by 46% higher accuracy using 3% model size
  4. Cover for iPlanner: Imperative Path Planning
    iPlanner: Imperative Path Planning.
    Fan Yang, Chen Wang, Cesar Cadena, Marco Hutter.
    Robotics: Science and Systems (RSS), 2023.
    A pioneer work in visual planning using imperative learning

Adaptive Learning for Robotic Systems

  1. Spatially-Enhanced Recurrent Memory for Long-Range Mapless Navigation via End-to-End Reinforcement Learning.
    Fan Yang, Per Frivik, David Hoeller, Chen Wang, Cesar Cadena, Marco Hutter.
    International Journal of Robotics Research (IJRR), 2025.
  2. AirSLAM: An Efficient and Illumination-Robust Point-Line Visual SLAM System.
    Kuan Xu, Yuefan Hao, Shenghai Yuan, Chen Wang, Lihua Xie.
    IEEE Transactions on Robotics (T-RO), vol. 41, pp. 1673–1692, 2025.
    Real-time visual SLAM at 70Hz with superior accuracy
  3. Cover for Unsupervised Online Learning for Robotic Interestingness with Visual Memory
    Unsupervised Online Learning for Robotic Interestingness with Visual Memory.
    Chen Wang, Wenshan Wang, Yuheng Qiu, Yafei Hu, Seungchan Kim, Sebastian Scherer.
    IEEE Transactions on Robotics (T-RO), vol. 38, no. 4, pp. 2446–2461, 2021.

Foundations in Learning and Representation

  1. SuperPC: A Single Diffusion Model for Point Cloud Completion, Upsampling, Denoising, and Colorization.
    Yi Du, Zhipeng Zhao, Shaoshu Su, Sharath Golluri, Haoze Zheng, Runmao Yao, Chen Wang.
    IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), pp. 16953–16964, 2025.
    Unifying point cloud processing via a single diffusion model
  2. Cover for iMatching: Imperative Correspondence Learning
    iMatching: Imperative Correspondence Learning.
    Zitong Zhan, Dasong Gao, Yun-Jou Lin, Youjie Xia, Chen Wang.
    European Conference on Computer Vision (ECCV), pp. 183–200, 2024.
    A self-supervised feature learning approach pushes SOTA by 30% accuracy gain
  3. Cover for Lifelong Graph Learning
    Lifelong Graph Learning.
    Chen Wang, Yuheng Qiu, Dasong Gao, Sebastian Scherer.
    IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), pp. 13719–13728, 2022.
    Selected as Oral presentation (4.2%)
  4. Visual Memorability for Robotic Interestingness via Unsupervised Online Learning.
    Chen Wang, Wenshan Wang, Yuheng Qiu, Yafei Hu, Sebastian Scherer.
    European Conference on Computer Vision (ECCV), pp. 52–68, 2020.
    Selected as Oral presentation (2%)
  5. Kervolutional Neural Networks.
    Chen Wang, Jianfei Yang, Lihua Xie, Junsong Yuan.
    IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), pp. 31–40, 2019.
    Selected as Oral presentation (5.6%)

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