About Me

Hi, my name is Junheng, I am a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering at the University of Southern California. 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 model-based control strategies such as Model Predictive Control (MPC), Whole-body Control (WBC), and Trajectory Optimization (TO). I have served as the lead on HECTOR project.

My CV

Education

USC Logo Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering, University of Southern California, 2022 - present

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

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


Publications and Projects

GIF Description
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).
arXiv preprint arXiv:2501.02116.

GIF Description

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GIF Description
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).
Accepted by ICRA 2025.

GIF Description
Autotuning bipedal locomotion mpc with grfm-net for efficient sim-to-real transfer
Chen, Q., Li, J., Cheng, S., Hovakimyan, N., Nguyen, Q. (2024).
arXiv preprint arXiv:2409.15710.

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

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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.

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

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

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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).

GIF Description
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).