Jing Liang

Jing Liang

PhD Student

the University of Maryland, College Park

About Me

I am a Ph.D. student at the University of Maryland, College Park, working in the GAMMA lab under the guidance of Dr. Dinesh Manocha. My research focuses on robotics, particularly in navigation and perception.

Interests

Robotics
Navigation
Scene Understanding

Education

PhD Robotics
the University of Maryland, College Park
MEng Robotics
the University of Maryland, College Park

Projects

Datasets

Datasets

Datasets for robotic navigation and perception purposes.

Oct 1010, 12120

Indoor Navigation

Indoor Navigation

Indoor Navigation solves the problem of moving robots in indoor scenarios. It includes indoor collision avoidance and indoor social navigation.

Oct 1010, 12120

Outdoor Navigation

Outdoor Navigation

Outdoor Navigation solves the problem of moving robots in outdoor scenarios with complex terrains and traffic conditions. It includes outdoor trajectory generation and outdoor social navigation.

Oct 1010, 12120

Place Recognition

Place Recognition

Place recognition localize the robot in a global map given current observations. This task includes place recognition in indoor and outdoor scenarios with various sensors.

Oct 1010, 12120

Scene Understanding

Scene Understanding

Scene understanding analysis the environment from robots’ observations and extract important information for down-stream tasks.

Oct 1010, 12120

Social Navigation

Social Navigation

Social navigation approaches include indoor and outdoor social interactions with human and traffic.

Oct 1010, 12120

Recent News

[2025.03] We have three papers accepted by ICRA 2025: BehAV, VLM-Social-Nav and GND.

[2025.01] I gave an invited talk in UC riverside. Video

[2024.11] I gave an invited talk in the North Carolina State University.

[2024.06] We have 3 papers accepted by IROS 2024: PoCo, DTG and Probabilistic Motion Forecasting.

Papers Under Submission

AutoSpatial: Visual-Language Reasoning for Social Robot Navigation through Efficient Spatial Reasoning Learning

Yangzhe Kong, Daeun Song, Jing Liang, Dinesh Manocha, Ziyu Yao, Xuesu Xiao. AutoSpatial: Visual-Language Reasoning for Social Robot Navigation through Efficient Spatial Reasoning Learning 2025.

Social-LLaVA: Enhancing Robot Navigation through Human-Language Reasoning in Social Spaces

Amirreza Payandeh, Daeun Song, Mohammad Nazeri, Jing Liang, Praneel Mukherjee, Amir Hossain Raj, Yangzhe Kong, Dinesh Manocha, Xuesu Xiao. Social-LLaVA: Enhancing Robot Navigation through Human-Language Reasoning in Social Spaces 2025.

Vi-LAD: Vision-Language Attention Distillation for Socially-Aware Robot Navigation in Dynamic Environments

Mohamed Elnoor, Kasun Weerakoon, Gershom Seneviratne, Jing Liang, Vignesh Rajagopal, Dinesh Manocha. Vi-LAD: Vision-Language Attention Distillation for Socially-Aware Robot Navigation in Dynamic Environments 2025.

PDF Project Video

ET-Former: Efficient Triplane Deformable Attention for 3D Semantic Scene Completion From Monocular Camera

Jing Liang, He Yin, Xuewei Qi, Jong Jin Park, Min Sun, Rajasimman Madhivanan, Dinesh Manocha. ET-Former: Efficient Triplane Deformable Attention for 3D Semantic Scene Completion From Monocular Camera 2024.

On the safety concerns of deploying llms/vlms in robotics: Highlighting the risks and vulnerabilities

Xiyang Wu, Ruiqi Xian, Tianrui Guan, Jing Liang, Souradip Chakraborty, Fuxiao Liu, Brian Sadler, Dinesh Manocha, Amrit Singh Bedi. On the safety concerns of deploying llms/vlms in robotics: Highlighting the risks and vulnerabilities 2024.

Publications

CSCPR: Cross-Source-Context Indoor RGB-D Place Recognition

Jing Liang, Zhuo Deng, Zheming Zhou, Min Sun, Omid Ghasemalizadeh, Cheng-Hao Kuo, Arnie Sen, Dinesh Manocha. CSCPR: Cross-Source-Context Indoor RGB-D Place Recognition 2025. In RA-L 2025.

VL-TGS: Trajectory Generation and Selection using Vision Language Models in Mapless Outdoor Environments

Daeun Song*, Jing Liang*, Xuesu Xiao, Dinesh Manocha. VL-TGS: Trajectory Generation and Selection using Vision Language Models in Mapless Outdoor Environments 2025. In RA-L 2025.

GND: Global Navigation Dataset with Multi-Modal Perception and Multi-Category Traversability in Outdoor Campus Environments

Jing Liang*, Dibyendu Das*, Daeun Song*, Md Nahid Hasan Shuvo, Mohammad Durrani, Karthik Taranath, Ivan Penskiy, Dinesh Manocha, Xuesu Xiao. GND: Global Navigation Dataset with Multi-Modal Perception and Multi-Category Traversability in Outdoor Campus Environments 2025. In ICRA 2025.

PDF Cite Code Dataset Video Website

VLM-Social-Nav: Socially Aware Robot Navigation through Scoring using Vision-Language Models

Daeun Song, Jing Liang, Amirreza Payandeh, Xuesu Xiao, Dinesh Manocha. VLM-Social-Nav: Socially Aware Robot Navigation through Scoring using Vision-Language Models 2025. In ICRA 2025.

BehAV: Behavioral Rule Guided Autonomy Using VLMs for Robot Navigation in Outdoor Scenes

Kasun Weerakoon, Mohamed Elnoor, Gershom Seneviratne, Vignesh Rajagopal, Senthil Hariharan Arul, Jing Liang, Mohamed Khalid M Jaffar, Dinesh Manocha. BehAV: Behavioral Rule Guided Autonomy Using VLMs for Robot Navigation in Outdoor Scenes 2025. In ICRA 2025.

Deep Stochastic Kinematic Models for Probabilistic Motion Forecasting in Traffic

Laura Zheng, Sanghyun Son, Jing Liang, Xijun Wang, Brian Clipp, Ming C. Lin. Deep Stochastic Kinematic Models for Probabilistic Motion Forecasting in Traffic 2024. In IROS 2024.

DTG: Diffusion-based Trajectory Generation for Mapless Global Navigation

Jing Liang, Amirreza Payandeh, Daeun Song, Xuesu Xiao, Dinesh Manocha. DTG: Diffusion-based Trajectory Generation for Mapless Global Navigation 2024. In IROS 2024.

PDF Cite Code Video

PoCo: Point Context Cluster for RGBD Indoor Place Recognition

Jing Liang, Deng Zhuo, Zheming Zhou, Omid Ghasemalizadeh, Dinesh Manocha, Min Sun, Cheng-Hao Kuo, Arnie Sen. PoCo: Point Context Cluster for RGBD Indoor Place Recognition 2024. In IROS 2024.

PDF Cite Code Video

Mtg: Mapless trajectory generator with traversability coverage for outdoor navigation

Jing Liang, Peng Gao, Xuesu Xiao, Adarsh Jagan Sathyamoorthy, Mohamed Elnoor, Ming C. Lin, Dinesh Manocha. Mtg: Mapless trajectory generator with traversability coverage for outdoor navigation 2024. In ICRA 2024.

PDF Cite Code Video

GrASPE: Graph based Multimodal Fusion for Robot Navigation in Outdoor Environments

Kasun Weerakoon, Adarsh Jagan Sathyamoorthy, Jing Liang, Tianrui Guan, Utsav Patel, Dinesh Manocha. GrASPE: Graph based Multimodal Fusion for Robot Navigation in Outdoor Environments 2023. In RA-L 2023.

MSVIPER

Roth, Aaron M., Jing Liang, Ram Sriram, Elham Tabassi, Dinesh Manocha. MSVIPER 2023. In JWAS 2023.

PDF Cite Website

Adaptiveon: Adaptive outdoor local navigation method for stable and reliable actions

Jing Liang, Kasun Weerakoon, Tianrui Guan, Nare Karapetyan, Dinesh Manocha. Adaptiveon: Adaptive outdoor local navigation method for stable and reliable actions 2022. In RA-L 2022.

PDF Cite Code Video

Terrapn: Unstructured terrain navigation using online self-supervised learning

Adarsh Jagan Sathyamoorthy, Kasun Weerakoon, Tianrui Guan, Jing Liang, Dinesh Manocha. Terrapn: Unstructured terrain navigation using online self-supervised learning 2022. In IROS 2022.

Visual, Spatial, Geometric-Preserved Place Recognition for Cross-View and Cross-Modal Collaborative Perception

Peng Gao, Jing Liang, Yu Shen, Sanghyun Son, Ming C. Lin. Visual, Spatial, Geometric-Preserved Place Recognition for Cross-View and Cross-Modal Collaborative Perception 2022. In IROS 2023.

PDF Cite Poster

CrossLoc3D: Aerial-Ground Cross-Source 3D Place Recognition

Tianrui Guan, Aswath Muthuselvam, Montana Hoover, Xijun Wang, Jing Liang, Adarsh Jagan Sathyamoorthy, Damon Conover, Dinesh Manocha. CrossLoc3D: Aerial-Ground Cross-Source 3D Place Recognition 2022. In CVPR 2023.

Image-goal navigation in complex environments via modular learning

Qiaoyun Wu, Jun Wang, Jing Liang, Xiaoxi Gong, Dinesh Manocha. Image-goal navigation in complex environments via modular learning 2022. In RA-L 2022.

XAI-N: Sensor-based robot navigation using expert policies and decision trees

Aaron M Roth, Jing Liang, Dinesh Manocha. XAI-N: Sensor-based robot navigation using expert policies and decision trees 2021. In IROS 2021.

PDF Cite Code Video

OF-VO: Efficient Navigation Among Pedestrians Using Commodity Sensors

Jing Liang, Yi-Ling Qiao, Tianrui Guan, Dinesh Manocha. OF-VO: Efficient Navigation Among Pedestrians Using Commodity Sensors 2021. In RA-L 2021.

Crowd-steer: Realtime smooth and collision-free robot navigation in densely crowded scenarios trained using high-fidelity simulation

Jing Liang, Utsav Patel, Adarsh Jagan Sathyamoorthy, Dinesh Manocha. Crowd-steer: Realtime smooth and collision-free robot navigation in densely crowded scenarios trained using high-fidelity simulation 2021. In IJCAI 2021.

PDF Cite Video Website

Autonomous social distancing in urban environments using a quadruped robot

Zhiming Chen, Tingxiang Fan, Xuan Zhao, Jing Liang, Cong Shen, Hua Chen, Dinesh Manocha, Jia Pan, Wei Zhang. Autonomous social distancing in urban environments using a quadruped robot 2021. In IEEE Access.

DenseCAvoid: Real-time Navigation in Dense Crowds using Anticipatory Behaviors

Jing Liang, Adarsh Jagan Sathyamoorthy, Utsav Patel, Tianrui Guan, Rohan Chandra, Dinesh Manocha. DenseCAvoid: Real-time Navigation in Dense Crowds using Anticipatory Behaviors 2020. In ICRA 2020.