Duc M. Nguyen

I am Duc (Aaron) M. Nguyen, a fourth-year PhD student in Computer Science at George Mason University, advised by Dr. Xuesu Xiao. I hold a B.S. in Computer Science from Miami University with a minor in Statistics.

I’m always open to collaborations, research discussions, and new opportunities. Feel free to reach out if you’re interested in my work or would like to explore potential projects together.

Research: My research focuses on enabling safe and intelligent robot behavior through advances in machine learning, task and motion planning, and autonomous systems.

1. Robot Learning and Planning. I develop learning-based approaches that enable robots to navigate and manipulate safely in complex, dynamic environments. My work spans deep learning for hierarchical control, large-scale simulation for policy training, and classical planning algorithms for collision avoidance and motion optimization.

2. Safe Autonomy and Human-Robot Interaction. I work on creating robots that can safely operate alongside people by modeling human behavior, predicting potential failures, and designing uncertainty-aware control systems. This includes large-scale dataset curation for social navigation and developing collaborative manipulation frameworks.

3. Data Pipeline for Robot Learning. I want to build scalable simulation environments and training infrastructure that accelerate robotics research, including GPU-accelerated systems supporting parallel environments and automated pipelines for realistic environment generation.

news

Oct 14, 2025	My discussion with a Google engineer about the tech market in August is on YouTube.
Jun 12, 2025	I started working on Reinforcement Learning for robot navigation and locomotion at Johns Hopkins Institute for Assured Autonomy, under Dr. Tinoosh Mohsenin.
Mar 27, 2023	MuSoHu dataset is available on GMU Dataverse.
Aug 20, 2022	Began my Ph.D. journey at the RobotiXX Lab under the supervision of Dr. Xuesu Xiao.

latest posts

May 14, 2024	Google Gemini updates: Flash 1.5, Gemma 2 and Project Astra

selected publications

arXiv

Anticipatory Task and Motion Planning

Roshan Dhakal, Duc M Nguyen, Tom Silver, Xuesu Xiao, and Gregory J Stein

arXiv preprint arXiv:2407.13694, 2024

arXiv Bib PDF

@article{dhakal2024anticipatory,
  title = {Anticipatory Task and Motion Planning},
  author = {Dhakal, Roshan and Nguyen, Duc M and Silver, Tom and Xiao, Xuesu and Stein, Gregory J},
  journal = {arXiv preprint arXiv:2407.13694},
  year = {2024},
}

ICPS

Human Uncertainty-Aware MPC for Enhanced Human-Robot Collaborative Manipulation

Duc M Nguyen, Filipe Veiga, Xuesu Xiao, and Xuan Wang

In 2024 IEEE 7th International Conference on Industrial Cyber-Physical Systems (ICPS), 2024

Bib HTML PDF

@inproceedings{nguyen2024human,
  title = {Human Uncertainty-Aware MPC for Enhanced Human-Robot Collaborative Manipulation},
  author = {Nguyen, Duc M and Veiga, Filipe and Xiao, Xuesu and Wang, Xuan},
  booktitle = {2024 IEEE 7th International Conference on Industrial Cyber-Physical Systems (ICPS)},
  pages = {1--6},
  year = {2024},
  organization = {IEEE},
}

arXiv

Human-Robot Co-Transportation with Human Uncertainty-Aware MPC and Pose Optimization

AJ Mahmud, AH Raj, DM Nguyen, X Xiao, and X Wang

arXiv preprint arXiv:2404, 2024

arXiv Bib

@article{mahmud2024human,
  title = {Human-Robot Co-Transportation with Human Uncertainty-Aware MPC and Pose Optimization},
  author = {Mahmud, AJ and Raj, AH and Nguyen, DM and Xiao, X and Wang, X},
  journal = {arXiv preprint arXiv:2404},
  year = {2024},
}

IROS

Toward Human-Like Social Robot Navigation: A Large-Scale, Multi-Modal, Social Human Navigation Dataset

Duc M Nguyen, Mohammad Nazeri, Amirreza Payandeh, Aniket Datar, and Xuesu Xiao

In 2023 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2023

Best Paper Award Finalist at AAAI AI-HRI 2023 Bib HTML PDF

Best Paper Award Finalist

@inproceedings{nguyen2023toward,
  title = {Toward Human-Like Social Robot Navigation: A Large-Scale, Multi-Modal, Social Human Navigation Dataset},
  author = {Nguyen, Duc M and Nazeri, Mohammad and Payandeh, Amirreza and Datar, Aniket and Xiao, Xuesu},
  booktitle = {2023 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS)},
  pages = {7442--7447},
  year = {2023},
  organization = {IEEE},
}

SNAM

Pathways to Suicide or Collections of Vicious Cycles? Understanding the Complexity of Suicide Through Causal Mapping

Philippe J Giabbanelli, Ketra L Rice, Michael C Galgoczy, Nisha Nataraj, Margaret M Brown, Christopher R Harper, Minh Duc Nguyen, and Romain Foy

Social Network Analysis and Mining, 2022

Bib HTML

@article{giabbanelli2022pathways,
  title = {Pathways to Suicide or Collections of Vicious Cycles? Understanding the Complexity of Suicide Through Causal Mapping},
  author = {Giabbanelli, Philippe J and Rice, Ketra L and Galgoczy, Michael C and Nataraj, Nisha and Brown, Margaret M and Harper, Christopher R and Nguyen, Minh Duc and Foy, Romain},
  journal = {Social Network Analysis and Mining},
  volume = {12},
  number = {1},
  pages = {60},
  year = {2022},
  publisher = {Springer},
}

Springer

Responsive Regulation of Dynamic UAV Communication Networks Based on Deep Reinforcement Learning

Ran Zhang, Duc Minh Nguyen, Miao Wang, Lin X Cai, and Xuemin Shen

In Broadband Communications, Computing, and Control for Ubiquitous Intelligence, 2022

arXiv Bib PDF

@incollection{zhang2022responsive,
  title = {Responsive Regulation of Dynamic UAV Communication Networks Based on Deep Reinforcement Learning},
  author = {Zhang, Ran and Nguyen, Duc Minh and Wang, Miao and Cai, Lin X and Shen, Xuemin},
  booktitle = {Broadband Communications, Computing, and Control for Ubiquitous Intelligence},
  pages = {35--63},
  year = {2022},
  publisher = {Springer},
}