Jixin (Kevin) Yan

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I am an undergraduate at Northwestern University, majoring in Computer Science at the McCormick School of Engineering. My research interests are robot learning, foundation models for robotics, and reinforcement learning.

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News
Experience
B.S. in Computer Science, McCormick School of Engineering
Sep 2025 – Jun 2029
Research Assistant
Advisor: Prof. Qi Zhu
Jan 2026 – Present
Jan 2026 – Present
Research Assistant
Advisor: Prof. Han Liu
Jan 2026 – Apr 2026
Projects
SENTINEL-lite — stay tuned SENTINEL-lite: Safety Evaluation of Foundation Model Based Embodied Agent
IDEAS Lab, Northwestern University Ongoing

A follow-up to SENTINEL, a formal-verification framework built on OmniGibson and BEHAVIOR-1K for the safety of foundation-model-based embodied agents.

Generative Bayesian Filtering diagram Generative Bayesian Filtering for Multi-Sensor LPBF Defect Monitoring
Professor Naichen’s Research Group, Northwestern University Ongoing

An online Generative Bayesian Filtering algorithm for laser powder-bed fusion (LPBF) defect monitoring that uses conditional VAEs as learned likelihoods.

OpenSO-101: A Unified Framework for Imitation Learning, Reinforcement Learning, and Sim2Real on the SO-101
Jixin Yan
Personal Project Ongoing

Open-source NVIDIA Isaac Lab framework for the LeRobot SO-101 arm that unifies PPO+Distillation, ACT, and Diffusion Policy training under a single CLI / Python API with a real-arm deployment bridge, backed by 80+ unit tests. A shared joint-position action space in LeRobot motor units lets one checkpoint play back in Isaac Sim and deploy on a Feetech follower with no sim-to-real conversion, alongside unified visual / observation / physics domain randomization across Lift, PickPlace, and Stack.

Autonomous Mobile Manipulation — stay tuned Autonomous Mobile Robot Manipulation with ROS2
Jixin Yan
Personal Project Ongoing

A modular 8-package ROS 2 Humble autonomy stack for TurtleBot3 mobile manipulation in Gazebo, with custom messages and actions (DetectedObject, TaskStatus, PickPlace) coordinating the perception → navigation → manipulation loop through a central task-manager node. Integrates Nav2 with a pick-place action server plus rosbag2 recording and a success-rate eval pipeline, with pluggable manipulation backends ready for future MoveIt 2 and learned-policy (ACT / Diffusion) integration.

DOBOT X-Trainer Nova2 demonstrations Bimanual Hardware Benchmarking for Imitation Learning
MAGICS Lab, Northwestern University Jan 2026 – Apr 2026
Advisor: Prof. Han Liu

A controlled study of how hardware fidelity propagates through the imitation-learning pipeline — from teleoperation data collection to policy deployment — comparing DOBOT X-Trainer Nova2 and AgileX PiPER bimanual platforms on peg insertion, towel folding, and object handover. The benchmark measures per-platform teleop success under latency, precision, and motion-scaling differences and pairs 25 demonstrations per task with ACT and Diffusion Policy training to relate policy-performance gaps to upstream data quality.

Grounded-SAM Pipeline for X-Ray Defect Labeling
Jixin Yan
Professor Naichen’s Research Group, Northwestern University Jan 2026 – Feb 2026

Automated pipeline that detects pores and keyholes in X-ray welding videos with Grounded SAM, then labels each frame by pore-generation type across four states and aggregates trajectories into a transition-probability matrix for downstream defect modeling.

SpiderPi Hexapod: Gait Control and Autonomous Exploration
Jixin Yan
Introduction to Robotics Lab, Northwestern University Jan 2025 – Mar 2025

A 6-DOF hexapod platform with tripod and wave gaits driven by inverse kinematics and IMU-based PD feedback, paired with A* planning over a discretized occupancy grid and a subsumption-based reactive controller for real-time obstacle avoidance. Includes a frontier-based exploration pipeline that incrementally builds the map and prioritizes frontiers by information gain for autonomous coverage.

Scout4One: Soccer Player Market-Value Prediction
Jixin Yan
Personal Project Nov 2024

A soccer player market-value prediction system with XGBoost and LightGBM ensembles trained on 30,000+ records and 31 engineered features, tuned via Optuna Bayesian search to reduce RMSE by 15%. Deployed as a Streamlit dashboard with 6 interactive analytics views.

Selected Honors
2026Northwestern Academic Year Undergraduate Research Grant
2026Northwestern Summer Undergraduate Research Grant
2025–26Dean’s List, Northwestern University

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