Peter Wang

Self-claimed Roboticist

Hi, I’m Qian Wang, but I go by Peter! I am a PhD student advised by Daniel Rakita at Yale University. I completed my undergrad at the University of Southern California (USC) studying Computer Engineering and Computer Science and Applied Math.

My research focuses on real-time 3D perception, understanding, and reconstruction for robots. I am interested in how robots can rapidly turn raw visual observations into structured, physically meaningful 3D representations that directly support manipulation and planning. In particular, I focus on methods that are fast enough to run in the loop with a robot while producing geometry that is accurate and usable for downstream tasks such as simulation, collision checking, and grasping. I have also contributed to work on fast differentiable optimization and automatic differentiation tooling that underpins efficient robot learning and control. Ultimately, I hope to equip robots with a fast and accurate understanding of the 3D world so they can act reliably in everyday environments.

Research

I was fortunate to participate in several research projects before Yale. I worked on contact-aware and collision-acceptable robotic manipulation with foundation models under Daniel Seita at the SLURM lab at USC. I did research with Maxim Likhachev at CMU and worked on 3D Multi-Agent Path Finding (MAPF) and ML MAPF. I worked on DNN-MCTS parallelization under the supervision of Viktor Prasanna. I worked on enhancing human-robot interaction using the Task and Motion Planning framework with the advisement of Stefanos Nikolaidis at the ICAROS lab. I worked on the design and control of a lightweight low-cost quadruped robot under the mentorship of Quan Nguyen at the DRCL lab.

Publications

Teaching Experience

Yale

  • Fall 2026: Teaching Fellow for CPSC 5720: Intelligent Robotics with Prof. Brian Scassellati
  • Spring 2026: Teaching Fellow for CPSC 1700: AI for Future Presidents with Prof. Brian Scassellati
  • Fall 2025: Teaching Fellow for CPSC 5850: Applied Planning and Optimization with Prof. Daniel Rakita

USC

  • Spring 2023 - Spring 2024: Course Producer for CSCI 360: Intro to Artificial Intelligence with Prof. Mohammad Rajati
  • Spring 2024: Course Producer for CSCI 102: Intro to Computing with Prof. Mohammad Rajati
  • Spring 2023: Grader for EE451: Parallel and Distributed Computations with Prof. Viktor Prasanna
  • Spring 2023: Lab Mentor for EE354: Intro to Digital Circuits with Prof. Gandhi Puvvada
  • Fall 2022: Course Producer for EE 109: Intro to Embedded Systems with Prof. Mark Redekopp

Honors and Awards

Contact

  • Work-related: peter.wang.qw262 ‘at’ yale ‘dot’ edu
  • Everything else: wangqian1207 ‘at’ gmail ‘dot’ com