Hi, my name is Junheng Li, I am a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Caltech AMBER Lab, supervised by Professor Aaron Ames. I received PhD in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Southern California in 2025, where I work with Professor Quan Nguyen at the Dynamic Robotics and Control Laboratory. My research focuses on dynamic control of humanoid robots in locomotion and manipulation (loco-manipulation) through hierarchical optimization-based control strategies such as Model Predictive Control (MPC), Whole-body Control (WBC), and Trajectory Optimization (TO).

My CV

Professional

Postdoc, Dept of Mechanical and Civil Engineering, Caltech, 2025 - present

Education

Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering, University of Southern California, 2022 - 2025

M.S. in Mechanical Engineering, University of Southern California, 2020 - 2021

B.S. in Mechanical Engineering, Loyola Marymount University, 2016 - 2020

Publications and Projects

DiffCoTune: Differentiable Co-Tuning for Cross-domain Robot Control
Krishna, L., Cheng, S., Li, J., Hovakimyan, N., Nguyen, Q. (2025).
RA-L 2025.

Humanoid Locomotion and Manipulation: Current Progress and Challenges in Control, Planning, and Learning
Gu, Z., Li, J., Shen, W., Yu, W., Xie, Z., McCrory, S., Cheng, X., Shamsah, A., Griffin, R., Liu, C. K., Kheddar, A., Peng, X. B., Zhu, Y., Shi, G., Nguyen, Q., Cheng, G., Gao, H., Zhao, Y. (2025).
IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics.

Gait-Net-augmented Implicit Kino-dynamic MPC for Dynamic Variable-frequency Humanoid Locomotion over Discrete Terrains
Li, J., Duan, Z., Ma, J., Nguyen, Q. (2025).
Robotics: Science and Systems 2025.

Adapting gait frequency for posture-regulating humanoid push-recovery via hierarchical model predictive control
Li, J., Le, Z., Ma, J., Nguyen, Q. (2025).
ICRA 2025.

A Novel Telelocomotion Framework with CoM Estimation for Scalable Locomotion on Humanoid Robots
Chi, A. C., Li, J., Park, J., Kolt, O., Beiter, B., Leonessa, A., Nguyen, Q., Akbari Hamed, K. (2025).
ICRA 2025.

Autotuning bipedal locomotion mpc with grfm-net for efficient sim-to-real transfer
Chen, Q., Li, J., Cheng, S., Hovakimyan, N., Nguyen, Q. (2024).
IROS 2025.

Continuous Dynamic Bipedal Jumping via Real-time Variable-model Optimization
Li, J., Kolt, O., Nguyen, Q. (2024).
arXiv preprint arXiv:2404.11807.

Dynamic Loco-Manipulation on Hector: Humanoid for Enhanced Control and Open-Source Research
Li, J., Ma, J., Kolt, O., Shah, M., Nguyen, Q. (2023).
arXiv preprint arXiv:2312.11868.

Kinodynamic pose optimization for humanoid loco-manipulation
Li, J., Nguyen, Q. (2023).
2023 IEEE-RAS 22nd International Conference on Humanoid Robots (Humanoids).

Multi-Contact MPC for Dynamic Loco-Manipulation on Humanoid Robots
Li, J., Nguyen, Q. (2023).
2023 IEEE American Control Conference (ACC).

Dynamic Walking of Bipedal Robots on Uneven Stepping Stones via Adaptive-Frequency MP
Li, J., Nguyen, Q. (2023).
IEEE Control Systems Letters.

Balancing Control and Pose Optimization for Wheel-Legged Robots Navigating High Obstacles
Li, J., Nguyen, Q. (2022).
2022 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS).

Force-and-Moment-Based Model Predictive Control for Achieving Highly Dynamic Locomotion on Bipedal Robots
Li, J., Nguyen, Q. (2021).
2021 60th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC).