Jiarun Dong

TerraGoat: 15-DOF Quadruped with an Active Spine

A goat-inspired quadruped platform for steep, contact-rich terrain, using an active spine, iterative hoof design, and a ROS 2 control architecture to study coordinated spine–limb climbing.

The mechanical prototype, wiring/hardware integration, ROS 2 modeling foundation, and open-loop tests are in place; learning-based climbing remains future work.

ROS 2 NMPC-CBF Controller for Moving-Obstacle Avoidance

A ROS 2 local controller for dynamic simulated environments, combining predictive NMPC with slack-relaxed discrete control barrier function constraints for online tracking and moving-obstacle avoidance.

Independently developed the controller model, CasADi/IPOPT solver, ROS 2 integration, and Gazebo stress tests.

* Performance and success figures are presentation-reported; full-system logs are forthcoming.

EST-Inspired Bidirectional Planner with RRT-Connect

A custom planner for 6-DOF UR5e configuration-space search in narrow passages such as an automotive interior, combining EST-inspired degree-weighted local sampling, Gaussian mirror sampling, and greedy RRT-Connect expansion across two trees.

Implemented the MoveIt 2 PlanningContext plugin, sampling and tree expansion, continuous joint-space collision checking, and bidirectional path reconstruction.

* Success rate is presentation-reported; the source archive contains no batch logs.