Do-Gon Kim

I recently completed my MS in Mechanical Engineering @ Columbia University. I researched in the ROAM Lab with Eric Chang as a graduate researcher, advised by Prof. Matei Ciocarlie, and in the Nonlinear Control Group as a graduate researcher, advised by Prof. Homayoon Beigi. My past research can be categorized into three areas: Finger Design Integrated with Tactile Sensors, Signal Processing for Sensing, and Control Algorithm Development. I have explored the design of systems that mimic the multiple sensory receptors of human touch. Moving forward, I aim to further explore the intersection of robotics, control systems, and learning to create robots that can better understand and interact with their surrounding environment.

Before joining Columbia, I received my Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering @ New York University, where I worked in the Control/Robotics Research Lab (CRRL), advised by Prof. Farshad Khorrami, on autonomous navigation using SLAM algorithms.

Email / CV / GitHub / LinkedIn

Recent Updates

[10-2025] Our work on SpikeATac is featured in The Wall Street Journal!
[10-2025] Presented paper & poster at IROS 2025
[10-2025] Presented poster with ROAMHand3 demo at NERC 2025
[7-2025] Gave a talk to Re'Generation Movement and high school students through the Jeju Special Self-Governing Province Office of Education’s “2025 Global University Exploration for High School Students”
[5-2025] Joined Nonlinear Control Group
[5-2025] Graduated from Columbia University!

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Research

My current research focuses on tactile sensing, robotic manipulation, and control systems, aiming to develop robots that better understand and respond to the physical world.

	SpikeATac: A Multimodal Tactile Finger with Taxelized Dynamic Sensing for Dexterous Manipulation Eric T. Chang, Peter Ballentine, Zhanpeng He, Do-Gon Kim, Kai Jiang, Hua-Hsuan Liang, Joaquin Palacios, William Wang, Pedro Piacenza, Ioannis Kymissis, Matei Ciocarlie joint first authorship Under Review webpage
	VibeCheck: Using Active Acoustic Tactile Sensing for Contact-Rich Manipulation Kaidi Zhang, Do-Gon Kim, Eric T. Chang, Hua-Hsuan Liang, Zhanpeng He, Kathryn Lampo, Philippe Wu, Ioannis Kymissis, Matei Ciocarlie equal contribution IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) 2025 arXiv / webpage

Project

Selected projects from academic courses and research labs.

	PD Control on JetCobot Research Project \| Nonlinear Control Group \| Columbia University Built a ROS 2 (C++) control framework and implemented a PD controller on the JetCobot.
	Hand Gesture-Based Robotic Gripper Control Research Project \| ROAM Lab \| Columbia University Built a vision-based control system for robotic grippers for hands-free operation.
	Vision-Guided Localization for Scaled Smart Intersection using ArUco Marker Tracking Research Project \| DitecT Lab \| Columbia University Developed a real-time ArUco marker detection system.
	Cable-Driven Parallel Robot with Adaptive Velocity Controller in Distribution Warehouse Course Project \| MECE E4602 Introduction to Robotics \| Columbia University Developed an adaptive velocity controller for a 4-cable-driven parallel robot, enabling dynamic speed adjustments based on the different objects. paper
	Autonomous Navigation Research Project \| CRR Lab \| New York University Enabled Turtlebot3 Burger to detect obstacles, map the environment, and autonomously navigate in an uncertain environment. abstract booklet
	Sheet Music Sight-Reader Course Project \| ROB-UY 3203 Robot Vision \| New York University Created a Colab-based CV pipeline that takes in the image of a sheet of music and outputs a playable music file.