Publications

Designed a modular multi-link mechanism implementing spatiotemporal stiffness modulation through sliding laminate flexures. Developed a variational dynamics model with hydrodynamic forces and applied trajectory optimization to identify optimal stiffness patterns. Spatiotemporal stiffness modulation increased thrust by 89% in drag-based paddling and 19% in body–caudal-fin swimming, validated through robotic experiments.

Formulated coupled robot and incompressible Navier–Stokes dynamics from a unified Lagrangian and derived a variational integrator for strongly-coupled fluid–robot multiphysics. Developed an integral-form immersed boundary method resolving singularities in classical formulations. Built a 6-link eel robot achieving 75% reduction in trajectory prediction error vs. SPH baselines, with successful sim-to-real transfer of C-start and swimming gaits.

Reproduced passive propulsion in vortex wakes using a segmented "dead-fish" robot. Studied how flexible passive bodies synchronize with oncoming vortex streets to extract flow energy and propel upstream. Conducted gradient-based design optimization of spatial stiffness distributions to maximize upstream swimming.

Developed printable thermoelectric ink for self-healing, thermally responsive soft devices combining shape memory alloys with shape memory polymers for programmable bending/twisting with power-free locking.

Designed a tendon-driven continuum robot featuring modular variable stiffness and in-situ self pose estimation for adaptive manipulation in unstructured environments.

Downscaled the Cosserat Rod model for analysis of forces and deformations in plane beams. Demonstrated enhanced computational efficiency and maintained accuracy compared to TBCM and NEB models through FEM validation in COMSOL.

Designed and fabricated a robot capable of both flying and swimming using low-melting-point alloy joints that switch between rigid (aerial) and compliant (aquatic) states. Achieved 77 mm/s swimming speed and 34% propulsion efficiency while retaining flight capability.

Developed TransMatch, a semi-supervised medical image segmentation framework addressing pseudo-label noise. Integrated expanded perturbation and consistency regularization with transitional augmentations, achieving 3.38% DSC improvement over SOTA on Pancreas-CT and LA datasets.

Constructed a pseudo-rigid-body dynamics model and proposed a data-driven optimization method for flexible passive joint paddles, reducing sim-to-real thrust error to 0.51% with 3.3× swimming speed improvement.

Designing a modular eel-like swimming robot with IMU, optical flow camera, and distributed pressure sensors. Applying iterative learning control to refine C-start trajectories from differentiable simulation. Implementing iLQR-based feedback for robust pose maintenance under flow disturbances.

Designing a compact skin-like flow sensing system integrating a GelSight-based tactile camera with RGB illumination for fluid flow measurement. Building a two-stage CNN to map base deformation to flow field and velocity estimation.