Shaoan Wang

Algorithm Engineer at Light Origins

I'm an algorithm engineer at Light Origins, working on embodied AI. I received my Ph.D. in 2026 from the School of Advanced Manufacturing and Robotics, Peking University, where I was advised by Prof. Junzhi Yu. During my Ph.D., I was a research intern at ByteDance Seed Robotics, and earlier at the embodied AI startup GALBOT, supervised by Prof. He Wang and Dr. Zhizheng Zhang. Before that, I completed my Bachelor's in Robotics at Beijing Institute of Technology in 2021, supervised by Prof. Huaping Wang.

My research interests lie in embodied AI, with a specific focus on vision-language navigation and multimodal robot perception and planning. Earlier in my Ph.D., I worked on high-precision pose estimation for curved surfaces by leveraging visual fiducial markers.

profile photo

News

  • 2026.07Joined Light Origins as an Algorithm Engineer!
  • 2026.07Received my Ph.D. from Peking University!
  • 2026.02NavFoM has been accepted to ICLR 2026!
  • 2026.02TrackVLA++ has been accepted to ICRA 2026!
  • 2025.08TrackVLA has been accepted to CoRL 2025!

Publications (Selected)

VLingNav animation
VLingNav
VLingNav: Embodied Navigation with Adaptive Reasoning and Visual-Assisted Linguistic Memory
Shaoan Wang*, Yuanfei Luo*, Xingyu Chen, Aocheng Luo, Dongyue Li, Chang Liu, Sheng Chen, Yangang Zhang, Junzhi Yu
arXiv Preprint
[PDF] [Project page]

VLingNav is a VLA model for embodied navigation that combines an adaptive chain-of-thought mechanism (AdaCoT) to trigger explicit reasoning only when needed with a visual-assisted linguistic memory module (VLingMem) to build persistent cross-modal semantic memory for long-horizon navigation.

NavFoM
Embodied Navigation Foundation Model
Jiazhao Zhang*, Anqi Li*, Yunpeng Qi*, Minghan Li*, Jiahang Liu, Shaoan Wang, Haoran Liu, Gengze Zhou, Yuze Wu, Xingxing Li, Yuxin Fan, Wenjun Li, Zhibo Chen, Fei Gao, Qi Wu, Zhizheng Zhang, He Wang
ICLR 2026
[PDF] [Project page]

We introduce a cross-embodiment and cross-task Navigation Foundation Model (NavFoM), trained on eight million navigation samples that encompass quadrupeds, drones, wheeled robots, and vehicles, and spanning diverse tasks such as vision-and-language navigation, object searching, target tracking, and autonomous driving.

TrackVLA++ animation
TrackVLA++
TrackVLA++: Unleashing Reasoning and Memory Capabilities in VLA Models for Embodied Visual Tracking
Jiahang Liu*, Yunpeng Qi*, Jiazhao Zhang*, Minghan Li, Shaoan Wang, Kui Wu, Hanjing Ye, Hong Zhang, Zhibo Chen, Fangwei Zhong, Zhizheng Zhang, He Wang
ICRA 2026
[PDF] [Project page]

TrackVLA++ is a novel Vision-Language-Action model that incorporates spatial reasoning and target identification memory, enabling superior performance in both long-horizon and highly crowded tracking scenarios.

TrackVLA animation
TrackVLA
TrackVLA: Embodied Visual Tracking in the Wild
Shaoan Wang*, Jiazhao Zhang*, Minghan Li, Jiahang Liu, Anqi Li, Kui Wu, Fangwei Zhong, Junzhi Yu, Zhizheng Zhang, He Wang
CoRL 2025
[PDF] [Project page] [Code & Benchmark]

We present TrackVLA, a vision-language-action model capable of simultaneous object recognition and visual tracking, enabling zero-shot deployment in real-world scenarios.

Uni-NaVid animation
Uni-NaVid
Uni-NaVid: A Video-based Vision-Language-Action Model for Unifying Embodied Navigation Tasks
Jiazhao Zhang, Kunyu Wang, Shaoan Wang (Core contributor), Minghan Li, Haoran Liu, Songlin Wei, Zhongyuan Wang, Zhizheng Zhang, He Wang
RSS 2025
[PDF] [Project page] [Code]

We present Uni-NaVid, the first video-based vision-language-action (VLA) model designed to unify diverse embodied navigation tasks and enable seamless navigation for mixed long-horizon tasks in unseen real-world environments.

EF-Calib EF-Calib: Spatiotemporal Calibration of Event- and Frame-based Cameras Using Continuous-Time Trajectories
Shaoan Wang, Zhanhua Xin, Yaoqing Hu, Dongyue Li, Mingzhu Zhu, Junzhi Yu
IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, 2024
[PDF] [BibTeX] [Code]

A novel spatiotemporal calibration toolkit for event-based and frame-based camera system.

Suturing robot navigation system Spatially Compact Visual Navigation System for Automated Suturing Robot Toward Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery
Shaoan Wang, Qiming Zhao, Dongyue Li, Yaoqing Hu, Mingzhu Zhu, Fusong Yuan, Jinyan Shao, Junzhi Yu
IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement, 2024
[PDF] [BibTeX]

A spatially compact visual navigation system for autonomous OMS (Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery) suture robot.

CylinderTag CylinderTag: An Accurate and Flexible Marker for Cylinder-Shape Objects Pose Estimation Based on Projective Invariants
Shaoan Wang, Mingzhu Zhu, Yaoqing Hu, Dongyue Li, Fusong Yuan, Junzhi Yu
IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, 2024
[PDF] [BibTeX] [Code]

A visual marker based on projective invariance called CylinderTag is developed, which provides a new solution for high-precision position estimation of curved objects.

Curved checkerboard-like marker detection Accurate Detection and Localization of Curved Checkerboard-Like Marker Based on Quadratic Form
Shaoan Wang, Mingzhu Zhu, Yaoqing Hu, Dongyue Li, Fusong Yuan, Junzhi Yu
IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement, 2022
[PDF] [BibTeX] [Code]

A subpixel corner detector for curved checkerboard-like markers based on quadratic form.