last updated: Jan 12, 2026

Joshua Yang

about

I study CS at CMU, specifically in Deep Learning and Robotics. Otherwise, I also like systems and theory-heavy math coursework.

My broad interests are robot learning and generative models. My current focus is to gain more experience in robot learning and gain more knowledge in NLP areas. I am currently conducting research at CMU Robotics Institute related to real2sim cloth folding.

Very eager to connect with you if you share the same interests

todo: add links/demos later

projects

2025
Diffusion demo
Image Generation Implemented DDPM/DDIM with CFG and VAE encoding trained with UNet on ImageNet-100 with 8xH100s on PSC. Also tried VAE reconstruction on faces.
Household Robot Finetuned VLA (π0.5, SmolVLA) on cloth folding tasks, succeeding almost 100% of time on trained tasks - pretraining allows robot to adapt to disruptions/mistakes as well. Also trained behaviorial cloning (Stanford ACT) on same task + other pick and place tasks.
2024
SLAM demo
SLAM Robot Implemented differential drive controller, EKF, sensor fusion, and 2D LiDAR SLAM in ROS2 Humble - simulated in Gazebo.
2023
Compverse demo
STEM Competition Web App Designed and built a multiplayer web app for lobbies and competing against players in science bowl/mathcounts Countdown games in real-time before agentic IDEs existed.
when i was more interested in hardware
FRC 7419 Robot
FRC 7419 (9919) ChargedUp Robot Led the design, fabrication, assembly, and programming of a) omnidirectional drivetrain b) lowered center of gravity c) lower four-bar arm linkage for FRC 7419's offseason "ChargedUp" Robot - This year's game aimed to pick-and-place cube balloons and traffic cones in versatile positions.
FPV Drone
Quadcopter FPV Drone A simple wiring, assembly, and installation for a quadcopter FPV drone.