Yichen Wei

I am currently a PhD student at the University of Pennsylvania, advised by Rachel Holladay and Eric Eaton. I graduated from Brown University in 2025 with a Master of Science in Computer Science. Previously, I was a research assistant at Brown Intelligent Robot Lab and Human To Robots lab, advised by Professor George Konidaris, Professor Stefanie Tellex, and Professor James Tompkin.

I aspire to build general, intelligent robots that seamlessly perform everyday tasks—from cooking meals to cleaning rooms. My current research interests center on enabling robust long-horizon decision making through neuro-symbolic methods, and designing intuitive human-robot interaction interfaces.

Outside of research, I enjoy cooking, traveling, and photography.

personal photo (small)

Publications

GHOST in the Robots: Real-Time Exocentric Dual-Robot VR Teleoperation from Onboard Cameras

Yichen Wei*, Faisal Zaghloul*, Soujanya C. Aryal, Aanya K. Agrawal, Chengfan Li, Jason Xinyu Liu, James Tompkin, Stefanie Tellex

IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L), 2026 [Paper]

Task and Skill Planning: Hierarchical Robot Planning with Black-Box Skills

Benned Hedegaard*, Yichen Wei*, Ziyi Yang, Ahmed Jaafar, Stefanie Tellex, George Konidaris, Naman Shah

ICRA 2026 [Paper]

SkillWrapper: Generative Predicate Invention for Task-level Robot Planning

Ziyi Yang, Benned Hedegaard, Ahmed Jaafar*, Yichen Wei*, Skye Thompson, Shreyas S. Raman, Haotian Fu, Stefanie Tellex, George Konidaris, David Paulius, Naman Shah

arXiv preprint, 2025 [Paper]

From Skills to TAMP: Learning Portable Symbolic Representations for Task and Motion Planning

Naman Shah, Benned Hedegaard, Yichen Wei, Ziyi Yang, Alper Ahmetoglu, Stefanie Tellex, George Konidaris

3rd CoRL Workshop on Learning Effective Abstractions for Planning (LEAP 2025) [Paper]

λ: A Benchmark for Data-Efficiency in Long-Horizon Indoor Mobile Manipulation Robotics

Ahmed Jaafar, Shreyas Sundara Raman, Sudarshan Harithas, Yichen Wei, Sofia Juliani, Anneke Wernerfelt, Benedict Quartey, Ifrah Idrees, Jason Xinyu Liu, Stefanie Tellex

IROS 2025 [Paper]

Structured Exploration in Reinforcement Learning by Hypothesizing Linear Temporal Logic Formulas

Yichen Wei, Xiaochen Li, Naman Shah, Benedict Quartey, George Konidaris, Stefanie Tellex, Jason Xinyu Liu*, Akhil Bagaria*

2nd CoRL Workshop on Learning Effective Abstractions for Planning (LEAP 2024) [Paper]

NovelGym: A Flexible Ecosystem for Hybrid Planning and Learning Agents Designed for Open Worlds

Shivam Goel, Yichen Wei, Panagiotis Lymperopoulos, Klára Churá, Matthias Scheutz, Jivko Sinapov

AAMAS 2024 [Oral] [Paper] [Code]

A neurosymbolic cognitive architecture framework for handling novelties in open worlds

Shivam Goel, Panagiotis Lymperopoulos, Ravenna Thielstrom, Evan Krause, Patrick Feeney, Pierrick Lorang, Sarah Schneider, Yichen Wei, Eric Kildebeck, Stephen Goss, Michael C Hughes, Liping Liu, Jivko Sinapov, Matthias Scheutz

Artificial Intelligence Volume 331, June 2024 [Paper]

* denotes equal contribution