Zhang Ceng

I am a graduate student from National University of Singapore, currently as a second-year PhD student in the department of mechanical engieering. I work under supervision of Prof.Cecilia Laschi and Prof. Gregory S. Chirikjian in the Robot and Protein Kinematics (RPK) Laboratory.

My research interests includes AI-assisted physical reasoning, reinforcement learning and large foundation models in robotics. I am committed to leveraging AI to equip robots with thinking brains and create more intelligent human-robot interaction.

Recent updates

• May 2025: The paper titled “The Curious Robot: Generalized Affordance Reasoning with Physics-Based and LLM-Enhanced Imagination” has been accepted by International Symposium on Experimental Robotics (ISER) 2025.
• Jan 2025: I continue my study as a PhD student at National University of Singapore.
• Sep 2024: The paper titled “Goal-Guided Reinforcement Learning: Leveraging Large Language Models for Long-horizon Task Decomposition” submitted (and accepted) by ICRA 2025.
• Oct 2023: My review paper “Large language models in human-robot interaction: A review” is accepted by Biomimetic Intelligence and Robotics.
• Jul 2023: I start my academic position as a Research Engineer at National University of Singapore.
• Jun 2023: I graduate as a master student from National University of Singapore, major in Mechanical Engineering.
• Nov 2022: I start my intern as a Research Assistant at Institute of Infocomm Research(I2R), A-STAR in Singapore.
• Jun 2022: I graduate from Beijing Jiaotong University with a bachelor degree in Mechatronics Engineering.

Education

• M.S. in Mechanical Engineering, National University of Singapore
  • Minor major: Robotics
  • Advisor: Prof. Chee-Meng Chew
• B.S. in Mechatronics Engineering, Beijing Jiaotong University
  • Research interets: Robotics, Controls theory and Circuit analysis.