Robotics & AI for Construction
I’m Xiayu (Summer) Zhao, a Civil Engineering Ph.D. candidate and Master of Computer Science student at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. I study robotics and AI for construction in the RAISe Lab, advised by Dr. Houtan Jebelli, and collaborate closely with Dr. Yizhi Liu.
Previously, I was a Research Engineer at Tsinghua University, developing large-scale robotic construction technologies and control software, with work in digital fabrication, 3D concrete printing, computational design, and algorithm optimization.
Research
I combine robotics, computer vision, machine learning, and human–computer interaction to improve construction safety, efficiency, and quality.
- Perception and inspection: Real-time roof defect segmentation (RRD-SegNet) and sensor fusion for aerial–ground robot teams.
- Human–robot collaboration: Natural-language robot control and LLM-driven navigation with terrain-adaptive planning.
- Control and autonomy: Modular UAV–UGV systems, adaptive hexapod control, reinforcement learning for navigation, and UAV payload stability.
- Worker safety: Transfer learning for heat-strain prediction and exoskeleton effects on metabolic cost.
- Digital fabrication: Robotic construction interfaces, 3D concrete printing, computational design, algorithm optimization, and biomimetic morphology simulation.
News
- 🎾 Summer Zhao won the consolation championship in Intermediate Open Singles at the Champaign Park District Labor Day Tennis Tournament. Congratulations!
- Olympiad Medalist with Tianyu Ren and Houtan Jebelli—one of six teams recognized across engineering fields at OES, University of Stavanger, Norway, for autonomous drone-based, non-contact surface finishing.
- Presented “AI-enhanced Adaptive Landing Gear for Aerial Robots in Dynamic Environments” at OES, Stavanger, Norway.
- First place, ASCE Global Robotics and Automation Competition at i3CE 2025 for construction robotics.
- Our roof defect segmentation paper with Houtan Jebelli was featured on the cover of Computer-Aided Civil and Infrastructure Engineering.
- Multiple papers accepted to the International Conference on Computing in Civil Engineering (i3CE) in both years.