Amirreza Davar

Mechanical Engineering PhD student · University of Arkansas

I am a second-year PhD student in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Arkansas, advised by Professor Dongyi Wang. My research focuses on robot learning and embodied AI for robotic manipulation.

I work on imitation learning, diffusion policies, deformable-object manipulation, tactile sensing, and sim-to-real robotics. My work connects human demonstrations, multimodal observations, policy learning, simulation, and real robotic systems.

My projects include ChicGrasp, an imitation-learning system with a custom dual-jaw gripper for delicate, irregular objects, and learning-based manipulation in NVIDIA Isaac Lab. I also coauthored research on tactile feedback and deformable tool control.

In summer 2025, I worked on surgical robotics research at Purdue University, exploring learning from egocentric surgical video and transferring human demonstrations toward robotic execution.

News

Feb 17, 2026 Our paper on state-adaptive Koopman control for deformable tool manipulation was published in Advanced Robotics Research.
Feb 05, 2026 ChicGrasp was published in Advanced Robotics Research.
Oct 17, 2024 Our survey of imitation learning in agricultural robotics was published in Frontiers in Robotics and AI.

Publications

Journal articles

2026

  1. Adv. Robot. Res. Figure from ChicGrasp: Imitation-Learning-Based Customized Dual-Jaw Gripper Control for Manipulation of Delicate, Irregular Bio-Products
    ChicGrasp: Imitation-Learning-Based Customized Dual-Jaw Gripper Control for Manipulation of Delicate, Irregular Bio-Products
    Amirreza Davar, Zhengtong Xu, Siavash Mahmoudi, Pouya Sohrabipour, Chaitanya Pallerla, Yu She, Wan Shou, Philip Glen Crandall, Dongyi Wang
    Advanced Robotics Research, 2026
    Paper ↗ Code ↗ Project ↗
    BibTeX 
    @article{davar2026chicgrasp,
  title = {ChicGrasp: Imitation-Learning-Based Customized Dual-Jaw Gripper Control for Manipulation of Delicate, Irregular Bio-Products},
  author = {Davar, Amirreza and Xu, Zhengtong and Mahmoudi, Siavash and Sohrabipour, Pouya and Pallerla, Chaitanya and She, Yu and Shou, Wan and Crandall, Philip Glen and Wang, Dongyi},
  journal = {Advanced Robotics Research},
  year = {2026},
  doi = {10.1002/adrr.202500149},
  html = {https://doi.org/10.1002/adrr.202500149},
  code = {https://github.com/AmirrezaDavar/ChicGrasp},
  website = {https://amirrezadavar.github.io/ChicGrasp/},
  preview = {chicgrasp-journal.jpg},
  selected = {true},
  bibtex_show = {true},
  abbr = {Adv. Robot. Res.}
}
  2. Adv. Robot. Res. Figure from A State-Adaptive Koopman Control Framework for Real-Time Deformable Tool Manipulation in Robotic Environmental Swabbing
    A State-Adaptive Koopman Control Framework for Real-Time Deformable Tool Manipulation in Robotic Environmental Swabbing
    Siavash Mahmoudi, Amirreza Davar, Dongyi Wang
    Advanced Robotics Research, 2026
    Paper ↗ Preprint ↗
    BibTeX 
    @article{mahmoudi2026koopman,
  title = {A State-Adaptive Koopman Control Framework for Real-Time Deformable Tool Manipulation in Robotic Environmental Swabbing},
  author = {Mahmoudi, Siavash and Davar, Amirreza and Wang, Dongyi},
  journal = {Advanced Robotics Research},
  year = {2026},
  doi = {10.1002/adrr.202500142},
  html = {https://doi.org/10.1002/adrr.202500142},
  arxiv = {2503.21491},
  preview = {contact-aware.jpg},
  bibtex_show = {true},
  abbr = {Adv. Robot. Res.}
}

2024

  1. Front. Robot. AI Figure from Leveraging Imitation Learning in Agricultural Robotics: A Comprehensive Survey and Comparative Analysis
    Leveraging Imitation Learning in Agricultural Robotics: A Comprehensive Survey and Comparative Analysis
    Siavash Mahmoudi, Amirreza Davar, Pouya Sohrabipour, Ramesh Bahadur Bist, Yang Tao, Dongyi Wang
    Frontiers in Robotics and AI, 2024
    Paper ↗
    BibTeX 
    @article{mahmoudi2024survey,
  title = {Leveraging Imitation Learning in Agricultural Robotics: A Comprehensive Survey and Comparative Analysis},
  author = {Mahmoudi, Siavash and Davar, Amirreza and Sohrabipour, Pouya and Bist, Ramesh Bahadur and Tao, Yang and Wang, Dongyi},
  journal = {Frontiers in Robotics and AI},
  volume = {11},
  pages = {1441312},
  year = {2024},
  doi = {10.3389/frobt.2024.1441312},
  html = {https://doi.org/10.3389/frobt.2024.1441312},
  preview = {imitation-learning-survey.jpg},
  selected = {true},
  bibtex_show = {true},
  abbr = {Front. Robot. AI}
}

Conference presentations

2025

  1. ICRA poster Figure from ChicGrasp: Imitation-Learning Control for Dual-Finger Manipulation of Delicate, Irregular, and Bio-products
    ChicGrasp: Imitation-Learning Control for Dual-Finger Manipulation of Delicate, Irregular, and Bio-products
    Amirreza Davar, Zhengtong Xu, Siavash Mahmoudi, Yu She, Wan Shou, Dongyi Wang
    International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), poster presentation, 2025
    Presentation record ↗
    BibTeX 
    @misc{davar2025chicgrasp_poster,
  title = {ChicGrasp: Imitation-Learning Control for Dual-Finger Manipulation of Delicate, Irregular, and Bio-products},
  author = {Davar, Amirreza and Xu, Zhengtong and Mahmoudi, Siavash and She, Yu and Shou, Wan and Wang, Dongyi},
  year = {2025},
  howpublished = {International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), poster presentation},
  note = {Poster presentation},
  html = {https://sfelab.uark.edu/proceedings-and-presentations/},
  preview = {chicgrasp-icra.jpg},
  bibtex_show = {true},
  abbr = {ICRA poster}
}

All publications →

Experience

Purdue University

May–August 2025

Research internship

Advisor: Dr. Juan Wachs

Topic: Surgical robotics — learning from egocentric surgical video and transferring human demonstrations toward robotic execution.