Zhe Chen 

Exploring the Real-World Boundaries of Autonomous Parking

Major: Mechanical Engineering, UM–SJTU Joint Institute

Faculty Mentor: Tong Qin

Zhe Chen focuses on autonomous driving, intelligent parking, reinforcement learning, and robotic planning systems. His work has been published at ICRA 2025, one of the world's premier robotics conferences.

Research Project

RL-OGM-Parking: A Hybrid Reinforcement Learning Framework for Autonomous Parking

The project combines rule-based planning with reinforcement learning to tackle complex parking scenarios such as narrow garages and dead-end spaces. Using LiDAR-based occupancy grid maps and a hybrid planning architecture, the system demonstrates robust real-world performance across a variety of challenging parking environments.

Looking ahead, Chen will continue his graduate studies in electronic information engineering and pursue research in autonomous driving, embodied intelligence, and intelligent decision-making systems.