Jing Liang
Jing Liang

Postdoctoral Scholar

Stanford Robotic Center - Stanford University

About Me

I am currently a postdoctoral scholar in the Department of Computer Science at Stanford University, affiliated with the Stanford Robotics Center and the Stanford Center on Longevity. I am fortunate to be supported by the New Map of Life Fellowship program. I work with Steve Cousins and Oussama Khatib on research focused on companion robots, with an emphasis on robot navigation, scene understanding, and human behavior perception and recognition.

Before joining Stanford, I earned my Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Maryland, College Park, where I worked in the GAMMA Lab advised by Dr. Dinesh Manocha. My doctoral research focused on robot navigation and perception, spanning both indoor and outdoor environments.

Projects
Datasets
Indoor Navigation
Outdoor Navigation
Place Recognition
Scene Understanding
Social Navigation
Recent News
  • [2026.10] I serve as the associate editor in ICRA 2026.
  • [2026.09] We are hosting the workshop, , in IROS 2026.
  • [2026.09] We are hosting the workshop, , in IROS 2026.
  • [2025.10] I serve as the associate editor in ICRA 2025.
  • [2025.06] We have a paper accepted by ISER 2025: MOSU: Autonomous Long-range Robot Navigation with Multi-modal Scene Understanding.
  • [2025.06] We have six papers accepted by IROS 2025: VL-TGS, AutoSpatial, Social-LLaVA, ET-Former, CSCPR, and On the Vulnerability of LLM/VLM-Controlled Robotics.
  • [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.
Publications
PhysGS: Bayesian-Inferred Gaussian Splatting for Physical Property Estimation
Samarth Chopra, Jing Liang, Gershom Seneviratne, Dinesh Manocha. PhysGS: Bayesian-Inferred Gaussian Splatting for Physical Property Estimation 2026. In CVPR 2026.
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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. In IROS 2025.
PDF Project
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 2025. In IROS 2025.
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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 2025. In IROS 2025.
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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. In IROS 2025.
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MOSU: Autonomous Long-range Robot Navigation with Multi-modal Scene Understanding
Jing Liang, AKasun Weerakoon, Daeun Song, Senthurbavan Kirubaharan, Xuesu Xiao, Dinesh Manocha. MOSU: Autonomous Long-range Robot Navigation with Multi-modal Scene Understanding 2025. In ISER 2025.
PDF
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.
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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.
PDF Video
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.
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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.
PDF Video
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.
PDF Code Video
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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MSVIPER
Roth, Aaron M., Jing Liang, Ram Sriram, Elham Tabassi, Dinesh Manocha. MSVIPER 2023. In JWAS 2023.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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