Selected Publications

2026

1. CVPR

   Generalized-CVO: Fast and Correspondence-Free Local Point Cloud Registration with Second Order Riemannian Optimization

   Zhang, Ray, Greiff, Marcus, Lew, Thomas,  and Subosits, John

   In Proceedings of the IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR) Jun 2026

2025

1. TPAMI

   RKHS-BA: A Robust Correspondence-Free Multi-View Bundle Adjustment Framework for Semantic Point Clouds

   Zhang, Ray, Song, Jingwei, Gao, Xiang, Wu, Junzhe, Liu, Tiany, Zhang, Jinyuan, Eustice, Ryan,  and Ghaffari, Maani

   IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence Jun 2025

2024

1. ECCV

   Correspondence-Free SE (3) Point Cloud Registration in RKHS via Unsupervised Equivariant Learning

   Zhang, Ray, Zhou, Zheming, Sun, Min, Ghasemalizadeh, Omid, Kuo, Cheng-Hao, Eustice, Ryan, Ghaffari, Maani,  and Sen, Arnie

   Proceedings of the European conference on computer vision Jun 2024
2. IJCARS

   BDIS-SLAM: a lightweight CPU-based dense stereo SLAM for surgery

   Song, Jingwei,  Zhang, Ray, Zhu, Qiuchen, Lin, Jianyu,  and Ghaffari, Maani

   International Journal of Computer Assisted Radiology and Surgery Jun 2024

2023

1. CoRL

   Se (3)-equivariant point cloud-based place recognition

   Lin, Chien Erh, Song, Jingwei,  Zhang, Ray, Zhu, Minghan,  and Ghaffari, Maani

   Conference on Robot Learning Jun 2023

2022

1. Front.

   Progress in symmetry preserving robot perception and control through geometry and learning

   Ghaffari, Maani,  Zhang, Ray, Zhu, Minghan, Lin, Chien Erh, Lin, Tzu-Yuan, Teng, Sangli, Li, Tingjun, Liu, Tianyi,  and Song, Jingwei

   Frontiers in Robotics and AI Jun 2022

   Abs HTML

   This article reports on recent progress in robot perception and control methods developed by taking the symmetry of the problem into account. Inspired by existing mathematical tools for studying the symmetry structures of geometric spaces, geometric sensor registration, state estimator, and control methods provide indispensable insights into the problem formulations and generalization of robotics algorithms to challenging unknown environments. When combined with computational methods for learning hard-to-measure quantities, symmetry-preserving methods unleash tremendous performance. The article supports this claim by showcasing experimental results of robot perception, state estimation, and control in real-world scenarios.

2021

1. ICRA

   A New Framework for Registration of Semantic Point Clouds from Stereo and RGB-D Cameras

   Zhang, Ray, Lin, Tzu-Yuan, Lin, Chien Erh, Parkison, Steven A., Clark, William, Grizzle, Jessy W., Eustice, Ryan M.,  and Ghaffari, Maani

   Jun 2021

   Bib HTML

   @article{zhang21cvo,
     author = {Zhang, Ray and Lin, Tzu-Yuan and Lin, Chien Erh and Parkison, Steven A. and Clark, William and Grizzle, Jessy W. and Eustice, Ryan M. and Ghaffari, Maani},
     conference = {2021 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA)},
     title = {A New Framework for Registration of Semantic Point Clouds from Stereo and RGB-D Cameras},
     year = {2021},
     volume = {},
     number = {},
     pages = {12214-12221},
     doi = {10.1109/ICRA48506.2021.9561929}
   }

2. CoRL

   Deep Multi-Modal Contact Estimation for Invariant Observer Design on Quadruped Robots

   Lin, Tzu-Yuan,  Zhang, Ray, Yu, Justin,  and Ghaffari, Maani

   Jun 2021

   Bib HTML

   @misc{lin2021deep,
     title = {Deep Multi-Modal Contact Estimation for Invariant Observer Design on Quadruped Robots},
     author = {Lin, Tzu-Yuan and Zhang, Ray and Yu, Justin and Ghaffari, Maani},
     year = {2021},
     eprint = {2106.15713},
     archiveprefix = {arXiv},
     primaryclass = {cs.RO}
   }

2020

1. RAL

   Bayesian Spatial Kernel Smoothing for Scalable Dense Semantic Mapping

   Gan, Lu,  Zhang, Ray, Grizzle, Jessy W., Eustice, Ryan M.,  and Ghaffari, Maani

   IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters Jun 2020

   Bib HTML

   @article{gan20bayesian,
     author = {Gan, Lu and Zhang, Ray and Grizzle, Jessy W. and Eustice, Ryan M. and Ghaffari, Maani},
     journal = {IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters},
     title = {Bayesian Spatial Kernel Smoothing for Scalable Dense Semantic Mapping},
     year = {2020},
     volume = {5},
     number = {2},
     pages = {790-797},
     doi = {10.1109/LRA.2020.2965390}
   }

2019

1. RAL

   Boosting Shape Registration Algorithms via Reproducing Kernel Hilbert Space Regularizers

   Parkison, Steven A., Ghaffari, Maani, Gan, Lu,  Zhang, Ray, Ushani, Arash K.,  and Eustice, Ryan M.

   IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters Jun 2019

   Bib HTML

   @article{parkison19boosting,
     author = {Parkison, Steven A. and Ghaffari, Maani and Gan, Lu and Zhang, Ray and Ushani, Arash K. and Eustice, Ryan M.},
     journal = {IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters},
     title = {Boosting Shape Registration Algorithms via Reproducing Kernel Hilbert Space Regularizers},
     year = {2019},
     volume = {4},
     number = {4},
     pages = {4563-4570},
     doi = {10.1109/LRA.2019.2932865}
   }