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Ciao Lab Leads to Launch the First Robotic Blimp Competition for Middle and High School Students
Ciao Lab Leads to Launch the First Robotic Blimp Competition for Middle and High School Students
$1.17M NIH Grant Awarded to CIAO Lab for Eye Research
$1.17M NIH Grant Awarded to CIAO Lab for Eye Research
Airborne Robotic Blimp Competition for Middle and High School Students
Airborne Robotic Blimp Competition for Middle and High School Students

This summer, Ciao Lab is proud to launch the Airborne Robotic Cup (ARC)—a thrilling and educational robotic blimp soccer competition designed for students from 8th to 12th grade. Led by Dr. Ningshi Yao at George Mason University and in collaboration with the Capital Youth Outreach Club (CYOC), this initiative blends cutting-edge robotics, AI, and hands-on STEM learning into one unforgettable experience.

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GMU Blimp Squad team
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Dr. Yao with GMU blimps
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A swarm of Flappy
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Dr. Yao with local high school students
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Dr. Yao attended the Creative Convergence Workshop to celebrate Dr. Naomi Leonard’s 60th birthday
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Robot and human co-learning study
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Rajul, Yidi and Dr. Yao at IROS 2023
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Mason Robotics at IROS 2023
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Dr. Yao and Rajul with Dr. Karinne Ramirez-Amaro at IROS 2023
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GMU blimp team in April 2023
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DTR competition hosted in EagleBank Arena at GMU
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Logo_big
Ciao Lab Leads to Launch the First Robotic Blimp Competition for Middle and High School Students
$1.17M NIH Grant Awarded to CIAO Lab for Eye Research
Airborne Robotic Blimp Competition for Middle and High School Students
skynet 1
Screenshot-2023-11-20-at-12.48.05-PM
Screenshot 2023-11-22 at 5.11.47 PM
Heterogeneous Agents 3
Screenshot 2023-11-22 at 5.11.29 PM
IMG_6804
Screenshot 2023-11-22 at 5.13.13 PM
IMG_6564
IMG_6565
IMG_6560
Screenshot 2023-05-01 at 8.08.37 PM
Screenshot-2023-05-01-at-8.17.12-PM
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Ciao! Welcome to our lab!

The Control, Intelligent Autonomy/Robots and Optimization Research Lab consists of both undergraduate and graduate students in electrical engineering and robotics under the supervision of Dr. Ningshi Yao in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, affiliated with Bio-engineering Department, at the George Mason University.

The research areas our group is actively engaged with are control theory, real-time scheduling, human-robot interaction/teaming, mixed integer optimization for resource allocation, bio-inspired robotics and autonomy, machine learning, and cyber-physical human systems.

visit our youtube channel and linkedin page:

Faculty

Dr. Ningshi Yao is an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, affiliated with Bio-engineering Department, at George Mason University. She received her PhD from the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology in 2020, and the BS in Automatic Control from Zhejiang University, China, in 2014. Prior to joining Mason, she was a postdoctoral research fellow at Georgia Institute of Technology from November 2020 to July 2021. Her research interests include real-time scheduling, control theory, cyber-physical systems, machine learning and human-robot interaction.

Sponsors

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Collaborators

Selected Videos

News

Unmanned Systems Journal Paper Acceptance

Our paper entitled “Avoiding Chatters with Hesitation in Human-Robot Co-Learning” by Dr. Ningshi Yao with our collaborators Dr. Yingke Li, Dr. Carol Young, and Dr. Fumin Zhang has been accepted by Unmanned Systems journal.

RO-MAN2025 Paper Acceptance

Our paper titled “One Human and Multi-Robot Collaboration: Evaluating the Impact of Attention-Guided On-Screen Recommendations on Human Multitasking Efficiency, Cognitive Load, and Trust” by Rajul Kumar, Renke Wang, and Dr. Ningshi Yao has been accepted Read more…

Contact us

Thanks for your interest in Ciao Lab. We are always looking for talented students and collaborators. Please feel free to send email to Dr. Yao or stop by at her office (Rm 166, Research Hall).

Address

Rm 166, Mason Autonomy and Robotics Center (MARC), Research Hall

001 York River Rd, Fairfax, VA, 22030

Email: nyao4 at gmu dot edu

Contact Us