Fukang Liu

I am a fourth-year PhD student in Robotics at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where I am advised by Zsolt Kira and Danfei Xu. I also work closely with Ye Zhao. I was supported by the IRIM PhD Fellowship. My research focuses on physically grounded robot learning, with an emphasis on humanoid systems and physical interaction. I study how learning and physical models can enable reliable and versatile interaction with the physical world. I am currently a part-time student researcher at Meta.

Previously, I was fortunate to work with Zackory Erickson and Zeynep Temel at Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University. I also spent great time at Department of Computer Science and Technology, Tsinghua University, worked with Bin Fang, Xiang Li, and Fuchun Sun, and began my journey in robotics. I hold a Master's degree from Carnegie Mellon University and Tsinghua University. I obtained my Bachelor's degree (with Honors) in Engineering Mechanics from Tongji University.

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Email: fukangliu[at]gatech[dot]edu

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News

  • [2026/09] Introducing Opt2VLA: force-aware vision-language-action for contact-rich humanoid whole-body manipulation.
  • [2026/05] Started as a research scientist intern at Meta.
  • [2025/09] Our Opt2Skill paper accepted to RA-L.
  • [2025/06] Our SkinGrip paper accepted to IROS 2025.
  • [2025/04] I passed my Ph.D. qualifying exam.
  • [2023/04] I've been awarded the IRIM Fellowship.
  • [2023/01] Our multimodal grasping paper accepted to IEEE Transactions on Robotics (T-RO).

  • Research

    I study how robots can acquire versatile whole-body skills and interact intelligently with the physical world. A central question in my research is how to connect high-level task understanding with the dynamics and constraints of physical interaction. My recent work takes a full-stack approach to this problem, from learning robust humanoid skills from dynamically feasible trajectories (Opt2Skill) to integrating vision-language-action policies with explicit force-aware interaction (Opt2VLA). More broadly, I am interested in physically grounded robot learning and autonomy, where learning is informed by contact, dynamics, and the physical consequences of action.

    If you're interested in my research or potential collaborations, please drop me an email.




    Publications

    Opt2VLA: Digit picking up a box with commanded and measured contact-force visualization Opt2VLA: Force-Aware Vision-Language-Action for Contact-Rich Humanoid Whole-Body Manipulation
    Fukang Liu*, Yipu Chen*, Jaehwi Jang, Danfei Xu, Zsolt Kira, Ye Zhao
    Under review
    paper | website
    REFINE-DP: Diffusion Policy Fine-tuning for Humanoid Loco-manipulation via Reinforcement Learning
    Zhaoyuan Gu, et al.
    IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L) 2026
    paper | website

    Opt2Skill: Imitating Dynamically-feasible Whole-Body Trajectories for Versatile Humanoid Loco-Manipulation
    Fukang Liu, Zhaoyuan Gu, Yilin Cai, Ziyi Zhou, Hyunyoung Jung, Jaehwi Jang, Shijie Zhao, Sehoon Ha, Yue Chen, Danfei Xu, Ye Zhao
    IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L) 2025
    paper | website | code (releasing soon)

    SkinGrip: An Adaptive Soft Robotic Manipulator with Capacitive Sensing for Whole-Limb Bathing Assistance
    Fukang Liu, Kavya Puthuveetil, Akhil Padmanabha, Karan Khokar, Zeynep Temel, Zackory Erickson
    The IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) 2025
    paper | video | website

    Hybrid Robotic Grasping with a Soft Multimodal Gripper and a Deep Multistage Learning Scheme
    Fukang Liu, Fuchun Sun, Bin Fang, Xiang Li, Songyu Sun, Huaping Liu
    IEEE Transactions on Robotics (T-RO) 2023
    paper | video | code

    Characterization of a Meso-Scale Wearable Robot for Bathing Assistance
    Fukang Liu, Vaidehi Patil, Zackory Erickson, Zeynep Temel
    IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Biomimetics (ROBIO) 2022
    paper

    Multimode Grasping Soft Gripper Achieved by Layer Jamming Structure and Tendon-Driven Mechanism
    Bin Fang, Fuchun Sun, Linyuan Wu, Fukang Liu, Xiangxiang Wang, Haiming Huang, Haiming Huang, Huaping Liu, Wen Li
    Soft Robotics 2022
    paper

    Academic Service

    Reviewer: T-RO, RA-L, TMECH, RSS, CoRL, ICRA, IROS, Humanoids, RoboSoft, CASE