Publications

See Google Scholar for a complete and up-to-date list.

* indicates equal contribution; † indicates corresponding author.

2026

I-Perceive: A Foundation Model for Vision-Language Active Perception

Yongxi Huang, Zhuohang Wang, Wenjing Tang, Cewu Lu, Panpan Cai

arXiv preprint · 2026

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Mimic Intent, Not Just Trajectories

Renming Huang, Chendong Zeng, Wenjing Tang, Jintian Cai, Cewu Lu, Panpan Cai

Robotics: Science and Systems (RSS) · 2026

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Any House Any Task: Scalable Long-Horizon Planning for Abstract Human Tasks

Zhihong Liu, Yang Li, Rengming Huang, Cewu Lu, Panpan Cai

arXiv preprint · 2026

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Vec-QMDP: Vectorized POMDP Planning on CPUs for Real-Time Autonomous Driving

Xuanjin Jin, Yanxin Dong, Bin Sun, Huan Xu, Zhihui Hao, XianPeng Lang, Panpan Cai

Robotics: Science and Systems (RSS) · 2026

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UniPlan: Vision-Language Task Planning for Mobile Manipulation with Unified PDDL Formulation

Haoming Ye, Yunxiao Xiao, Cewu Lu, Panpan Cai

arXiv preprint · 2026

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2025

Tru-POMDP: Task Planning Under Uncertainty via Tree of Hypotheses and Open-Ended POMDPs

Wenjing Tang, Xinyu He, Yongxi Huang, Yunxiao Xiao, Cewu Lu, Panpan Cai

Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS) · 2025

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UniDomain: Pretraining a Unified PDDL Domain from Real-World Demonstrations for Generalizable Robot Task Planning

Haoming Ye, Yunxiao Xiao, Cewu Lu, Panpan Cai

Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS) · 2025

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ForceVLA: Enhancing VLA Models with a Force-aware MoE for Contact-rich Manipulation

Jiawen Yu*, Hairuo Liu*, Qiaojun Yu*, Jieji Ren, Ce Hao, Haitong Ding, Guangyu Huang, Guofan Huang, Yan Song, Panpan Cai, Wenqiang Zhang, Cewu Lu

Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS) · 2025

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Hi-Drive: Hierarchical POMDP Planning for Safe Autonomous Driving in Diverse Urban Environments

Xuanjin Jin, Chendong Zeng, Shengfa Zhu, Chunxiao Liu, Panpan Cai

IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L) · 2025

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World Modeling Makes a Better Planner: Dual Preference Optimization for Embodied Task Planning

Siyin Wang, Zhaoye Fei, Qinyuan Cheng, Shiduo Zhang, Panpan Cai, Jinlan Fu, Xipeng Qiu

Proceedings of the 63rd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL) · 2025

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2023

What Truly Matters in Trajectory Prediction for Autonomous Driving?

Phong Tran*, Haoran Wu*, Cunjun Yu*, Panpan Cai, Sifa Zheng, David Hsu

Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS) · 2023

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Closing the Planning-Learning Loop with Application to Autonomous Driving

Panpan Cai, David Hsu

IEEE Transactions on Robotics (T-RO) · 2023

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The Planner Optimization Problem: Formulations and Frameworks

Yiyuan Lee, Katie Lee, Panpan Cai, David Hsu, Lydia E. Kavraki

arXiv preprint · 2023

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2022

LEADER: Learning Attention over Driving Behaviors for Planning under Uncertainty

Mohamad H. Danesh*, Panpan Cai* (corresponding author), David Hsu

Conference on Robot Learning (CoRL) (Best Paper Finalist) · 2022

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GAMMA: A General Agent Motion Model for Autonomous Driving

Yuanfu Luo*, Panpan Cai* (co-first and corresponding author), Yiyuan Lee, David Hsu

IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L) · 2022

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2021

MAGIC: Learning Macro-Actions for Online POMDP Planning using Generator-Critic

Yiyuan Lee, Panpan Cai, David Hsu

Robotics: Science and Systems (RSS) · 2021

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2020

SUMMIT: A Simulator for Urban Driving in Massive Mixed Traffic

Panpan Cai*, Yiyuan Lee* (co-first author), Yuanfu Luo, David Hsu

IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) · 2020

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2019

LeTS-Drive: Driving in a Crowd by Learning from Tree Search

Panpan Cai, Yuanfu Luo, Aseem Saxena, David Hsu, Wee Sun Lee

Robotics: Science and Systems (RSS) · 2019

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Context and Intention Aware Planning for Urban Driving

Malika Meghjani, Yuanfu Luo, Qi Heng Ho, Panpan Cai, Shashwat Verma, Daniela Rus, David Hsu

IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) · 2019

2018

HyP-DESPOT: A hybrid parallel algorithm for online planning under uncertainty

Panpan Cai, Yuanfu Luo, David Hsu, Wee Sun Lee

Robotics: Science and Systems (RSS), 2018; extended version in International Journal of Robotics Research (IJRR), 2021

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PORCA: Modeling and planning for autonomous driving among many pedestrians

Yuanfu Luo, Panpan Cai, Aniket Bera, David Hsu, Wee Sun Lee, Dinesh Manocha

IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L) · 2018

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2017

Automatic path planning for dual-crane lifting in complex environments using a prioritized multiobjective PGA

Panpan Cai, Indhumathi Chandrasekaran, Jianmin Zheng, Yiyu Cai

IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics (TII) · 2017

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2016

Parallel genetic algorithm based automatic path planning for crane lifting in complex environments

Panpan Cai, Yiyu Cai, Indhumathi Chandrasekaran, Jianmin Zheng

Automation in Construction · 2016

Method and system for intelligent crane lifting

Yiyu Cai, Panpan Cai, Chandrasekara Indhumathi, Jianmin Zheng, Nadia M Thalmann, Peng Wong, Teng Sam Lim, Yi Gong

Patents (US Patent App. 15/027,373) · 2016