PH.D. RESEARCHER · ROBOT LEARNING · REINFORCEMENT LEARNING · ROBOTICS

Talha Zaidi

I am a Ph.D. researcher working on robot learning, reinforcement learning, and autonomous systems. My work focuses on long-horizon decision-making and learning for real robots, with hands-on experience in ROS 2, simulation, teleoperation, real robot control, and industrial automation.

I am interested in robotics roles where learning methods connect with real hardware, autonomy, and deployment.

Offline / Online RL Robot Learning ROS 2 Real Robot Control
Talha Zaidi
Recent Highlights
  • Jun 2026 CRISP accepted to IROS 2026 Conference.
  • May 2026 GRALP accepted to IJCAI IJCAI-ECAI 2026 AI and Robotics Track.
  • Jun 2026 Received the Excellence in Research Award
  • Jun 2026 Selected for the IEEE Telerobotics Summer School at RIT
  • April 2026 Received the Outstanding Research Award
Interactive Demo

Robot Arm Control

Target x: 0.61 · y: 0.43

Move the cursor to change the target.

01 / Selected work

Selected Robotics Work

A selection of work in robot learning, long-horizon control, ROS 2, and autonomous systems.

01 / OFFLINE RL GRALP robotic manipulation results
Robot Learning Offline RL Latent Skills Generative Policies

GRALP — Generative Representation for Action Refinement and Latent Planning

Developed a latent-skill planning framework for long-horizon control and evaluated it on D4RL, Adroit, and RoboSuite. The method separates high-level planning from low-level action refinement for multi-stage tasks.

~8% higher average performanceIJCAI 2026D4RL · Adroit · RoboSuite
02 / ROBUST PLANNING CRISP long-horizon planning
Partial Observability Masked Modeling Skill Planning

CRISP — Context-Robust Long-Horizon Skill Planning

Developed masked skill inference for offline RL when part of the decision context is missing or unreliable.

IROS 2026Long-horizon control
03 / ROS 2 SYSTEMS Robot teleop
ROS 2 Teleoperation Digital Twins Unreal Engine

Multi-Robot Teleoperation & Digital-Twin Interface

Built and tested a ROS 2 teleoperation interface in Unreal Engine for SCUTTLE and LIMO mobile robots, with multi-robot control and matching digital-twin environments.

Physical robots + simulationROS 2
04 / REAL ROBOT CONTROL Brain-robot interface controlling robotic actuator
ROS 2 ros2_control Closed-Loop Control Neural Decoding

Closed-Loop Brain–Robot Interface for Real-Time Robotic-Arm Control

Built a closed-loop pipeline that converted motor-cortex activity into robot motion commands. The system used ROS 2 and ros2_control for joint-space velocity control and was tested on a physical robotic actuator.

Real robotic actuatorSensor → decoder → action → feedback
05 / RL AUTONOMY RL autonomous spacecraft trajectory planning
Reinforcement Learning Attention Autonomous Planning Continuous Control

Attention-Based RL for Long-Horizon Autonomous Trajectory Optimization

Developed an attention-based reinforcement learning method for long-horizon trajectory optimization in a NASA-funded autonomy project.

10% lower transfer time vs. strong baselinesIEEE TAESNASA funded
02 / What I build

What I Build

I work across learning algorithms, simulation, robotics software, and control.

RL

Learning & Policy Optimization

Offline/online reinforcement learning, imitation learning, actor-critic methods, policy refinement, diffusion models, latent skills, and long-horizon sequence decision-making.

PYTORCH · D4RL · ADROIT · ROBOSUITE
ROS

Robotics Integration

ROS 2, ros2_control, teleoperation, robot feedback loops, multi-robot control, and simulator-to-system integration.

ROS 2 · MOVEIT · UNREAL · GAZEBO
SIM

Simulation & Embodied AI

Robot-learning evaluation and policy experimentation in MuJoCo, Isaac Sim, RoboSuite, D4RL/Adroit, and digital-twin environments.

MUJOCO · ISAAC SIM · ROBOSUITE
FM

Generative & Foundation Models

Diffusion models, VAEs, sequence modeling, vision-language and VLA models, LoRA/PEFT, preference-based fine-tuning, and RLHF/GRPO.

TRANSFORMERS · PEFT · VLA
SYS

ML Systems

Python, C++, Linux, GPU training, CUDA-aware experimentation, reproducible evaluation, and MATLAB/Simulink for control-oriented systems.

PYTHON · C++ · LINUX · CUDA
HW

Industrial Controls

PLCs, sensors, instrumentation, electromechanical hardware, troubleshooting, root-cause analysis, machine commissioning, and production deployment.

ALLEN-BRADLEY · COMMISSIONING · RCA
03 / Experience

Experience

Doctoral Researcher ISCAAS Lab · Kansas State University Aug 2021 — Aug 2026
  • Developed generative decision and latent-skill planning frameworks for long-horizon control, improving benchmark performance by ~8% across D4RL, Adroit, and RoboSuite.
  • Developed attention-based reinforcement learning for a NASA-funded autonomy project, reducing transfer time by 10% versus strong baselines.
  • Developed and tested a ROS 2 teleoperation interface in Unreal Engine for physical SCUTTLE and LIMO mobile robots with digital-twin environments.
  • Evaluated reinforcement learning, imitation learning, and generative-policy methods under robustness, distribution shift, and policy adaptation settings.
Research Engineer — Neural Control & Robotics Neuroprosthetics Research Group (NRG) Oct 2018 — Dec 2020
  • Built a closed-loop brain–robot interface translating motor-cortex activity into real-time robotic-arm control through ROS 2.
  • Developed online neural decoding with signal processing, spike detection/sorting, firing-rate estimation, and motion-command generation.
  • Integrated the decoder with ROS 2 and ros2_control for joint-space velocity control and real-time robot feedback.
  • Evaluated the physical system in target-reaching experiments with continuous neural guidance.
Automation and Control Engineer Tetra Pak Apr 2016 — Jun 2018
  • Worked hands-on with complex automated machinery integrating Allen-Bradley PLC controls, sensors, instrumentation, and electromechanical hardware.
  • Troubleshot hardware and control-system failures across PLCs, sensors, electrical systems, and machine components.
  • Served as project engineer for installation and commissioning of high-speed automated systems, supporting bring-up, testing, and production deployment.
  • Performed root-cause analysis and preventive maintenance to improve reliability and minimize downtime.
Automation Systems Engineer Tera Generation Solutions Apr 2015 — Mar 2016
  • Integrated and commissioned distributed building-automation systems connecting controllers, sensors, lighting, and field devices.
  • Configured automation logic and validated end-to-end sensor-to-actuator behavior during deployment.
04 / Technical stack

Technical Stack

RL & Decision-Making
Offline RLOnline RLImitation Learning Policy OptimizationPolicy RefinementLong-Horizon Planning
Robotics & Embodied AI
ROS 2ros2_controlMoveIt MuJoCoIsaac SimUnreal Engine RoboSuiteD4RL / Adroit
Generative & Representation Learning
Diffusion ModelsVAEsLatent Skills Sequence ModelingWorld Models
Foundation Models
Vision-Language ModelsVLA ModelsLoRA / PEFT Preference Fine-TuningRLHF / GRPO
Programming & ML Systems
PythonPyTorchC++Linux GPU TrainingCUDAMATLAB / Simulink
05 / Selected publications

Selected Publications

Selected work most relevant to robot learning, reinforcement learning, and autonomous systems.

IJCAI 2026
GRALP: Generative Representation for Action Refinement and Latent Planning in Offline Reinforcement LearningLong-horizon offline RL · generative action refinement · robotic manipulation benchmarks
CODE ↗
IROS 2026
CRISP: Context-Robust Inpainting for Long-Horizon Skill Planning under Partial Observability in Offline Reinforcement LearningRobust skill inference · incomplete decision context · long-horizon planning
CODE ↗
CVPR 2026
GRAZE: Grounded Refinement and Motion-Aware Zero-Shot Event LocalizationGrounded and motion-aware video understanding
PAPER ↗
IEEE TAES
Single-Agent Attention Actor-Critic: A Deep Reinforcement Learning-Based Solution for Low-Thrust Spacecraft Trajectory OptimizationAttention-based RL · autonomous sequential optimization
PAPER ↗
BMVC 2021
Mode-Guided Feature Augmentation for Domain GeneralizationRepresentation learning · robustness to unseen domains
PAPER ↗
06 / Recognition

Recognition

Excellence in Research AwardKansas State University · June 2026
Outstanding Research AwardKansas State University CS · April 2026
Best Paper Presentation AwardIEEE APEC · 2026
Graduate Student of the MonthKansas State University · March 2026
CONTACT

Let’s connect.

I am interested in industrial robotics and robot-learning roles where learning methods connect with real systems, simulation, controls, and deployment.