ELPIS Lab

UH200B, Unity Hall

100 Institute Rd

Worcester, MA 01609

Welcome to the webpage of the Efficient Learning and Planning for Intelligent Systems (ELPIS) Lab.

The Lab has a broad interest in autonomous robotic systems capable of reasoning about and interacting with the physical world. The primary goal is to develop agents that are efficient, robust, and capable of learning from real-world interactions. Current research projects focus on the integration of classical planning algorithms and state-of-the-art machine learning techniques, aiming to advance 1) planning efficiency, 2) planning robustness, and 3) planning from visual inputs.

If you are interested in joining the Lab please see this page.

Research Focus Areas

Our core work spans three complementary themes that shape the lab's research agenda.

Research Focus 1

Planning Robustness

We build robust planners that reason under uncertainty and partial observability to improve safety and reliability.

Explore Robustness Research

Planning Robustness

Research Focus 2

Planning Efficiency

We design planning systems that reduce computation time while retaining high-quality trajectories in high-dimensional spaces.

Explore Efficiency Research

Planning Efficiency

Research Focus 3

Planning from Visual Inputs

We investigate representations that enable task and motion planning directly from image observations in real-world scenes.

Explore Vision Research

Planning from Visual Inputs

News

Sep 28, 2026	Our paper “AURA: Asymptotically Optimal Uncertainty-Robust Replanning Algorithm for Kinodynamic Systems” has been accepted to IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L)! Congratulations to Ali Golestaneh, Zhuoyun Zhong, and Donghyung Lee!
Sep 20, 2026	ELPIS Lab, along with Professor Jing Xiao, received an Amazon WPI Robotics Engineering Award gift for 83k$ to conduct research on contact-rich planning for humanoid manipulation.
Sep 04, 2026	Our paper “STRIPS-WM: Learning Grounded Propositional STRIPS-style World Models from Images” has been accepted to CoRL 2026! Congratulations to Abhiroop Ajith!
Aug 15, 2026	Jaskrit Singh is joining the ELPIS Lab as a Ph.D. student in Fall 2026. Welcome!
Jul 02, 2026	ActivePusher won the Best Student Paper Award at the Hellenic Robotics Forum (HRF) 2026! Congratulations to Zhuoyun Zhong and Ali Golestaneh!
Jun 04, 2026	ActivePusher won the Best Student Paper Award at ICRA 2026! Congratulations to Zhuoyun Zhong and Ali Golestaneh!
May 30, 2026	Our paper ActivePusher: Active Learning and Planning with Residual Physics for Nonprehensile Manipulation led by Zhuoyun Zhong and Ali Golestaneh was accepted to ICRA2026 and is nominated for best paper award in the Planning and Control Category!
May 07, 2026	The senior capstone project (MQP) on parachute packing from ELPIS lab, won the RBE department award! See the amazing video here.
Aug 29, 2025	ELPIS Lab along with professor Jing Xiao received an Automotive Research Center grant for 170k$ to conduct research on real-time path planning in unmapped rough off-road terrains.
Jul 01, 2025	ELPIS Lab was awarded the NSF-CRII grant for 175k$ to conduct research on how robots can learn abstract, symbolic representations from visual and execution data.