Minku Kim

About Me

Hi, I'm Minku Kim, a Ph.D. candidate in Robotics at Oregon State University and a member of the Dynamic Robotics and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, advised by Professor Alan Fern.

Previously, I earned an M.S. in Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics from the University of Pennsylvania. In the Dynamic Autonomy and Intelligent Robotics Lab, advised by Professor Michael Posa and co-advised by Professor Pratik Chaudhari.

I am always happy to discuss robotics research and potential collaborations. Feel free to get in touch.

Research Interests

• Legged & Humanoid Robots: reinforcement learning, whole-body control, skill learning, and sim-to-real transfer
• Robot Perception: 6D pose and shape estimation, multi-view vision, and sensor-rich feedback

News

• 2026Received CoRL 2026 Travel Award!
• 2026Humanoid Hanoi was accepted to CoRL 2026. See you in Austin, Texas!
• 2025Learning a Vision-Based Footstep Planner for Hierarchical Walking Control was accepted to IEEE-RAS Humanoids as an oral presentation. See you in Seoul, Korea!
• 2025Received the Oregon State College of Engineering Scholarship!
• 2025Received the Penn Engineering Outstanding Research Award!

Obstacle Avoidance Using Control Barrier Functions

Control barrier functions filter motion commands for a Unitree Go2 quadruped to avoid obstacles detected using AprilTags.

Comparative Analysis of MPC, LQR, and RL Footstep Planners on Uneven Terrain

A Drake-based comparison of model-predictive, LQR, and reinforcement-learning footstep planners for Cassie.

Optimization-Based Obstacle Estimation from Human Demonstrations

Learning obstacle geometry from expert demonstrations through CLF-CBF constraints and probabilistic regression.

Paper Poster

Vision-Aided Pick-and-Stack with a 7-DOF Manipulator

AprilTag perception, gradient-based inverse kinematics, and collision-aware waypoint planning for a Franka Panda.