publications

2026

1. 

   PLATO Hand: Shaping Contact Behavior With Fingernails for Precise Manipulation

   Dong Ho Kang, Aaron Kim, Mingyo Seo, Kazuto Yokoyama, Tetsuya Narita, and Luis Sentis

   IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, 2026

   DOI PDF Website My contribution

   My contribution: Led the project from core concept to manuscript, with contributions in hardware implementation, experimental design, result interpretation, and writing.

2. 

   ARISTO Hand: Sensing-Driven Distal Hyperextension for Fine-Grained Manipulation

   Aaron Kim, Dong Ho Kang, Mark Helwig, Mingyo Seo, Kazuto Yokoyama, Tetsuya Narita, and Luis Sentis

   In 2026 IEEE/ASME International Conference on Advanced Intelligent Mechatronics (AIM), 2026

   Accepted

   Website My contribution

   My contribution: Embedded system, low-level control, and system integration.

3. 

   Soft Vortex Gripper for Dexterous Manipulation using Hand-Like Robots

   Martin Kojouharov, Dong Ho Kang, Drake Rowland, Roman Mykhailyshyn, Luis Sentis, and Ann Majewicz Fey

   In 2026 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2026

   Accepted

   My contribution

   My contribution: Manipulator and hand controller integration for experiments.

2025

1. 

   RPC: A Modular Framework for Robot Planning, Control, and Deployment

   Seung Hyeon Bang, Carlos Gonzalez, Gabriel Moore, Dong Ho Kang, Mingyo Seo, Ryan Gupta, and Luis Sentis

   In 2025 IEEE/SICE International Symposium on System Integration (SII), 2025

   DOI PDF My contribution

   My contribution: Fixed-base manipulator whole body control software integration.

2023

1. 

   Design of a Person-Carrying Robot for Contact Compliant Navigation

   Carlos Gonzalez, Samantha Lee, Francisco Montano, Steven Ortega, Dong Ho Kang, Mehar Jaiswal, Junfeng Jiao, and Luis Sentis

   Aug 2023

   Abs DOI PDF My contribution

   My contribution: Low-level controller, SLAM, and autonomous navigation.

   Navigating human-centered environments is a complex task for robots. It requires having hardware capable of sensing the environment as humans do and requires software that efficiently reasons about this information in real time. Current robotic platforms tend to avoid contacts, while human robot interaction highly depends on this. We believe having platforms and algorithms that combine visual and tactile information is crucial in developing navigation algorithms for human-centered environments. In this work, we present the mechatronic design of our new mobile robot which is capable of carrying a person and that can sense its environment through contact and vision. We detail our design procedure, parting from design specifications to material selection and show its preliminary appearance along with some experimental navigation while carrying a person. We provide detailed analyses on our mechanical design through Finite Element Analysis simulations, present our material selection for all of the hardware components, and give details on our low-level code controlling our robot. We have set up our robot to work with the ROS framework and have shared our code, which includes the low-level code to communicate with the EtherCAT servo drives. We believe this information will ease development of new robots by the robotics research community.