Biography
I am Yan Miao, a PhD student at UIUC, advised by Prof. Sayan Mitra. My research focuses on developing robust vision-based controller for autonomous systems, specifically targeting quadrotors and fixed-wing aircrafts. By leveraging imitation learning and 3D Gaussian Splatting, I explore zero-shot sim-to-real transfer of vision-policy learned in photorealistic simulation to real-word aircrafts.
Before joining Prof. Mitra’s group, I got my bachelor’s degree at UIUC with High Honors.
Download my CV.
Latest News:
- [06/2025] Our FalconGym paper has been accepted to IROS 2025!
- [06/2025] Giving a talk on vision-based UAV landing at RSS GRRA Workshop
- [05/2025] Starting Research Intern position at Toyota Research Institute North America (TRINA)
Interests
- Vision-based Control
- Sim-to-Real Transfer
- Learning-based Robotics
Education
M.S. in Computer Engineering, 2024
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
B.S. in Computer Engineering, 2021
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Publications
(2025).
FalconWing: An Open-Source Platform for Ultra-Light Fixed-Wing Aircraft Research.
Under Review.
(2025).
Zero-Shot Sim-to-Real Visual Quadrotor Control with Hard Constraints.
Accepted in IROS 2025.
(2024).
From Dashcam Videos to Driving Simulations: Stress Testing Automated Vehicles against Rare Events.
In ML4AD @ AAAI 2025.
(2024).
Safe Autonomy: Continuous Testing and Controller Compensation for Unreliable Perception.
Master Thesis.
(2023).
Correcting Learning-based Perception for Safety.
Working Paper.
Experience
Research Intern
Responsibilities include:
- Developing vision-based controller for fixed-wing aircrafts
Research Intern
Responsibilities include:
- Worked on Real-to-Sim transfer of Dashcam crash videos using Vision-Language Models (VLMs)
- Presented work at ML4AD @ AAAI 2025
Projects
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Awards
1st PLACE Most Engaging
2022 Engineering Open House
1st PLACE The Spirit of Innovation
2022 Engineering Open House
2nd PLACE Outstanding Tech Exhibit
2022 Engineering Open House
Teachers Ranked as Excellent
Contact
- yanmiao2@illinois.edu
- 247 Coordinated Science Lab, 1308 W Main St, Urbana, IL 61801