Publications
An updated list of all publications can be found on my Google Scholar profile.
Preprints
GRaD-Nav++: Vision-Language Model Enabled Visual Drone Navigation with Gaussian Radiance Fields and Differentiable Dynamics
Q. Chen, N. Gao, S. Huang, J. Low, T. Chen, J. Sun, M. Schwager
arXiv | website | code
TLDR: GRaD-Nav++ is a lightweight, fully onboard Vision-Language-Action framework that enables drones to follow natural language commands in real time using DiffRL training in a 3DGS simulator, achieving strong generalization across tasks and environments both in simulation and on real hardware.
Q. Chen, N. Gao, S. Huang, J. Low, T. Chen, J. Sun, M. Schwager
arXiv | website | code
TLDR: GRaD-Nav++ is a lightweight, fully onboard Vision-Language-Action framework that enables drones to follow natural language commands in real time using DiffRL training in a 3DGS simulator, achieving strong generalization across tasks and environments both in simulation and on real hardware.
Journal Articles
[RA-L 2023] Simultaneous Spatial and Temporal Assignment for Fast UAV Trajectory Optimization using Bilevel Optimization
Q. Chen, S. Cheng, N. Hovakimyan
IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, vol. 8, no. 6, pp. 3860–3867, 2023
link | arXiv
TLDR: Proposes a bilevel optimization framework for jointly assigning UAV waypoints in space and time to achieve efficient navigation through constrained environments.
Q. Chen, S. Cheng, N. Hovakimyan
IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, vol. 8, no. 6, pp. 3860–3867, 2023
link | arXiv
TLDR: Proposes a bilevel optimization framework for jointly assigning UAV waypoints in space and time to achieve efficient navigation through constrained environments.
Conferences
[IROS 2025] GRaD-Nav: Efficiently learning visual drone navigation with Gaussian radiance fields and differentiable dynamics
Q. Chen, J. Sun, N. Gao, J. Low, T. Chen, M. Schwager
arXiv | website | code
TLDR: We propose a vision-based drone navigation framework that leverages differentiable dynamics and Gaussian radiance fields for sample-efficient learning and robust generalization.
Q. Chen, J. Sun, N. Gao, J. Low, T. Chen, M. Schwager
arXiv | website | code
TLDR: We propose a vision-based drone navigation framework that leverages differentiable dynamics and Gaussian radiance fields for sample-efficient learning and robust generalization.
[IROS 2025] Autotuning Bipedal Locomotion MPC with GRFM-Net for Efficient Sim-to-Real Transfer
Q. Chen, J. Li, S. Cheng, N. Hovakimyan, Q. Nguyen
arXiv | website
TLDR: This work introduces GRFM-Net for modeling bipedal robot actuation and proposes an MPC autotuning pipeline that enables robust sim-to-real locomotion transfer.
Q. Chen, J. Li, S. Cheng, N. Hovakimyan, Q. Nguyen
arXiv | website
TLDR: This work introduces GRFM-Net for modeling bipedal robot actuation and proposes an MPC autotuning pipeline that enables robust sim-to-real locomotion transfer.