Yanwen Zou

Yanwen Zou (邹砚文)

I'm a Ph.D. student of Shanghai Jiaotong University, advised by Prof. Cewu Lu and Prof. Chuan Wen. I got MEng degree from The Department of Mechanical Engineering at UC Berkeley, where I was fortunate to cooperate with PhDs and postdocs in MSC Lab led by Prof. Masayoshi Tomizuka.

Before my journey at Berkeley, I received my Bachelor's degree from School of Mechanical and Engineering, Qian Xuesen Class at Shanghai Jiaotong University. After graduation, I studied Finance at SAIF at Shanghai Jiaotong University and then dropped out.

I work closely with Prof. Bo Zhao, and also have precious experience in Grasp Lab at Zhejiang University, advised by Prof. Huixu Dong, and robotics startup Maxinsights.

Email / Scholar / LinkedIn / Twitter / GitHub

Research

I'm interested in embodiment transfer and general robotics data. I also believe Robotics for Fun will be an insteresting topic, feel free to reach out if you feel excited about this as well.

	Evo-1 : Lightweight Vision-Language-Action Model with Preserved Semantic Alignment Tao Lin, Yilei Zhong, Yuxin Du, Jingjing Zhang, Jiting Liu, Yinxinyu Chen, Encheng Gu, Ziyan Liu, Hongyi Cai, Yanwen Zou, Lixing Zou, Zhaoye Zhou, Gen Li, Bo Zhao project page / arXiv Evo-1 builds on a native multimodal Vision-Language model (VLM), incorporating a novel cross-modulated diffusion transformer along with an optimized integration module, together forming an effective architecture. With only 0.77 billion parameters, Evo-1 achieves SOTA results on the Meta-World and RoboTwin suite.
	U-ARM : Ultra low-cost general teleoperation interface for robot manipulation Yanwen Zou, Zhaoye Zhou, Chenyang Shi, Zewei Ye, Junda Huang, Yan Ding, Bo Zhao project page / arXiv U-Arm is a low-cost, universal, leader-follower teleoperation system for any commercial robot arms through 3 hardware configurations. Designed for researchers, educators, and robotics enthusiasts, it provides a standardized interface for diverse robot platforms.
	Evo-0: Vision-Language-Action Model with Implicit Spatial Understanding Tao Lin, Gen Li, Yilei Zhong, Yanwen Zou, Yuxin Du, Jiting Liu, Encheng Gu, Bo Zhao project page / arXiv Evo-0 introduces a plug-and-play module that implicitly injects 3D geometry features into VLA models by leveraging an off the-shelf visual geometry foundation models.
	Bimanual Exoskeleton for Robotics Data Collection We made cool prototypes, while there are no pics here for confidentiality reasons.

Projects

	Flycatcher Robot（ハエトリロボ） A character in Apocalypse Hotel(末日后酒店). 3D-Printed and can be controlled through game controller. 📎 RedNote
	Tendon-driven Dexterous Hand and Wearable Finger Each finger has flexion and lateral DoF with torsion springs incorporated into every joint. The current configuration still has limited payload. Assembly remains a maddening job thanks to all the tendons.
	✈️ Amphibious Fixed-wing Aircraft An undergraduate class project. We designed turbines that adapt to both water and air, and integrated the system on top of an open-source flight control board. It hit a tree during takeoff, but we still believe it could fly.

I am accompanied with: