I am conducting postdoctoral research at MIT advised by Alberto Rodriguez. I work in the MCube Lab (Manipulation and Mechanisms at MIT). My current research focuses on tactile sensing and contact perception. I am interested in how we can enable robots to sense contact and affect the world by leveraging the physical interactions.
I achieved my B.S. and Ph.D. degrees from Peking University, with the research focusing on contact modeling and dynamics.
Learn about what I do
I am working on a vision-based tactile sensor: GelSlim. I reconstructed the high-resolution 3D deformation field of the sensing element. Furthermore, I achieved high-resolution force distribution reconstruction from the deformation field using inverse Finite Element Method (iFEM).
I utilize the tactile sensing to estimate the interaction of an unknown grasped object with its environment, i.e., localizing contact extrinsic to the robot, and I explored the critical role that distributed tactile sensing plays in localizing it.
Inspired by the anisotropic friction observed on wood, we seek to design anisotropic friction map on a surface with micro-textures. A fabrication process is designed and friction data are collected on various micro-textures. Special friction property at endeffecor could enable interesting possiblity of manipulation.
I simulated dynamics of aero-space and railway transportation systems. Especially, the dynamics simulation were used to check safety designs for the the critical physical impacts, which can be disastrous if not well anticipated, planned, and controlled.
I studied classical, simple mechanical systems that involve non-trivial contact-modeling problems. For examples, the rolling Euler's Disk was investigated to understand the energy dissipation during rolling, where rolling resistant was identified as the essential dissipation mechanism.
I build models to pseudo-rigid contact process. For example, a unified constitutive model is proposed to cover through elastic, mixed elastic-plastic, and full plastic regimes of material in the contact patch, which can be employed to predict the dynamic outcomes of an impact such as energy dissipation, post-impact velocity, and coefficient of restitution (COR).
I'm invited to give a talk on Nov. 4, 2019 at IROS Workshop: The current limits and potentials of autonomous assembly.
