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Haoran Yang

Entry-level Robotics Research Assistant specializing in contact-implicit MPC and manipulation

University of PennsylvaniaUniversity of Illinois Urbana-ChampaignPhiladelphia, PA1 Years ExperienceEntry LevelWorks On-Site

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About

Robotics software engineer who built and tuned a contact-implicit MPC controller for a full planar pushing manipulation pipeline (“Push Anything”), including a key fix for complementarity violations that eliminated “ghost pushes” and cut time-to-goal from 40s to 25s. Hands-on with ROS/MoveIt on real robot pick-and-place, improving hardware grasp reliability through TF/frame debugging, and uses Drake/URDF for simulation, contact detection, and MPC development.

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Key Strengths

  • Designed and implemented contact-implicit MPC for planar pushing manipulation
  • Debugged and fixed complementarity-violation failure mode (“ghost pushes”) by aligning QP and projection steps and adding penalties
  • Demonstrated measurable performance improvement (C-shaped object time-to-goal reduced 40s to 25s)
  • Balanced planning horizon vs control rate in real-time MPC tuning (selected N=12 after experimentation)
  • ROS/MoveIt integration with real hardware; improved grasp reliability via TF debugging and frame alignment
  • Adapted existing 3D manipulation codebase to planar pushing by rewriting functions and communication ports

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Experience

Research AssistantUniversity of Pennsylvania · Jan 2025 – Present
Research AssistantUniversity of Illinois Urbana-Champaign · Feb 2023 – Aug 2023

Education

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaignbachelor, Mechanical Engineering (2024)
Zhejiang Universitybachelor, Mechanical Engineering (2024)
University of Pennsylvaniamaster, Mechanical Engineering & Applied Mechanics (MEAM) (2026)

Awards

  • 2nd place overall - UPenn Mechatronics MOBA Robot Competition (Team UltraBot)
  • Best Killer award - UPenn Mechatronics MOBA Robot Competition (Team UltraBot)

Skills

C++PythonMATLABRPyTorchEmbedded CROSJAXGurobiOSQPSNOPTIsaac LabDrakeBazelLaTeX

Languages

English

Publications

1 publication

Robotic manipulationContact-implicit model predictive controlOptimization-based controlPushing (single- and multi-object)

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Haoran YangEntry-level Robotics Research Assistant specializing in contact-implicit MPC and manipulation