Yixiao (Jimmy) Fang

I’m a second-year M.S./Ph.D. student at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign under the Electrical and Computer Engineering department. Currently, I’m a member of the Human-Centered Autonomy Lab advised by Prof. Katie Driggs-Campbell.

Before attending graduate school, I obtained my bachelor’s degree also at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where I majored in Electrical Engineering and minored in Computer Science.

I work at the intersection of robotics, machine learning, and computer vision to help autonomous systems better understand and navigate the world around them. Most recently, I’m interested in exploring reliable sim and eval methods that can help to answer the question “Is the autonomous system safe?” before the actual deployment. With the development of generative AI and as some autonomous systems (autonomous vehicles etc.) are ready to scale in a dynamic and unstructured world, I truly believe this is a crucial aspect to focus on.

Most recently, I spent time at Zoox Inc., honorably supervised by Eric Schafer and Dr. Phillipe Burlina to work on generative sensor simulation for autonomous vehicles. Earlier, I was at LifeFoundry Inc., working on real-time vision-based perception system for AGVs.

Feel free to explore my work and reach out if you’re interested. I’m always excited to connect with others in robotics, AI, and tech innovation!