Jerry (Qilong) Cheng
「程启龙」

I’m currently a Robotics Ph.D. Student at NYU working on Embodied Generative Control: Unified RL and Diffusion Policies for Locomotion and Dexterous Manipulation, with prior work in
state estimation (STARS Lab , Prof. Jonathan Kelly),
haptics/HRI (DGP Lab, Prof. Daniel Wigdor),
learning-based manipulation/control (UofT Robotics Institute, Prof. Matthew Mackay; Prof. Ali Bereyhi).

Research Interests

I aim to integrate Universal Manipulation Interface–scale perception with torque-level reinforcement learning to handle contact, embodiment, and whole-body loco-manipulation in real-world settings.

• How do we fuse foundation models with dynamics-aware control?

• How can vision, tactile, and proprioception be integrated into a single unified policy?

• How do IL and RL merge to generalize beyond demonstrations?

• How do we co-design hardware, sensing, and control to make learning scalable?

I am also a strong believer in Steve Jobs’ idea that “those who are truly serious about software should design their own hardware.”

I'm currently looking for PhD opportunities or industry positions in Robotics starting Fall 2026!

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Coffee Chat

I'm always open to chatting about Robotics, Research, Startups, or just connecting! Feel free to grab a time on my calendar below.

Location: Any Cafe with Enough Clearance for a 6-DOF Robot Arm

Schedule a Coffee

Education

New York University
Ph.D. Candidate in Mechanical Engineering (Robotics) — GPA: 4.00 / 4.00
Sep 2025 – Aug 2029
University of Toronto
M.Eng. in Computer Engineering (Robotics) — GPA: 3.92 / 4.00
Sep 2023 – Aug 2025
University of Toronto
B.A.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering
Minor in Robotics & Business — Senior GPA: 3.94 / 4.00
Aug 2017 – Jun 2023

Publications

Evolution of Humanoid Locomotion Control
Y. Gu, G. Shi, F. Shi, I. Chang, Y. Wang, Q. Cheng, Z. Olkin, I. Lopez-Sanchez, Y. Feng, J. Zhang, A. D. Ames, H. Su, and K. Sreenath

A comprehensive review and perspective of humanoid locomotion control methods, spanning classical to learning-based approaches to emerging trends.

Robot-World & Hand-Eye Calibration
A Certifiably Correct Algorithm for Generalized Robot-World and Hand-Eye Calibration
E. Wise, P. Kaveti, Q. Cheng, W. Wang, H. Singh, J. Kelly, D. M. Rosen, and M. Giamou
IJRR (Under Review), 2025

Certifiably correct calibration achieving globally optimal robot-world and hand-eye alignment under general conditions.

IRIS cinema robot arm thesis cover
Master's Thesis: Design and Development of IRIS: An Intelligent Robotic Imaging System — A Low-Cost, 3D-Printed Cinema Robot Arm for Dynamic Shot Automation
Q. Cheng, M. Mackay, A. Bereyhi
Master of Engineering Thesis, University of Toronto, 2025

Low-cost, fully 3D-printed 6-DoF cinema robot arm (IRIS) with FOC actuators, differential wrist, and a vision-conditioned imitation-learning stack in ROS.

VibraForge thumbnail
VibraForge: A Scalable Prototyping Toolkit For Creating Spatialized Vibrotactile Feedback Systems
B. Huang, S. Ren, Y. Luo, Q. Cheng, H. Cai, Y. Sang, M. Sousa, P. H. Dietz, and D. Wigdor
CHI, 2025

An open-source toolkit enabling rapid design and deployment of large-scale vibrotactile feedback systems for spatialized haptic interactions.

AeroHaptix thumbnail
AeroHaptix: A Wearable Vibrotactile Feedback System for Enhancing Collision Avoidance in UAV Teleoperation
B. Huang, Z. Wang, Q. Cheng, S. Ren, H. Cai, A. Alvarez Valdivia, K. Mahadevan, and D. Wigdor
IEEE RA-L, 2024

Introduces a wearable vibrotactile system integrated with UAV teleoperation, leveraging control barrier functions for safe human-drone interaction.

Radar Pair Calibration thumbnail
Extrinsic Calibration of 2D Millimetre-Wavelength Radar Pairs Using Ego-Velocity Estimates
Q. Cheng, E. Wise, and J. Kelly
IEEE AIM, 2023

Proposes a calibration framework for radar-radar pairs leveraging ego-motion cues without overlapping views for improved pose estimation accuracy.

Radar-Camera Spatiotemporal Calibration thumbnail
Spatiotemporal Calibration of 3D Millimetre-Wavelength Radar-Camera Pairs
E. Wise, Q. Cheng, and J. Kelly
IEEE TRO, 2022

Introduces continuous-time B-spline calibration for radar-camera systems, outperforming state-of-the-art methods in robustness and precision.

Weakly Supervised Augmentation thumbnail
Weakly Supervised Semantic and Attentive Data Mixing Augmentation for Fine-Grained Visual Categorization
M. He, Q. Cheng, and G. Qi
IEEE Access, 2022

Proposes a weakly supervised attention-guided data augmentation strategy for fine-grained image classification tasks.

Generative Design for Unicycle Robot thumbnail
Generative Design for Self-Balancing Unicycle Robot in Additive Manufacturing
J. Chen, Q. Cheng, and M. Han
SPIE ACAIB, 2022

Applies generative design and additive manufacturing techniques to develop a self-balancing unicycle robot prototype.

News

[11/2025] Graduated with a Master's of Engineering degree at the University of Toronto.

[10/2025] Attended IROS 2025 in Hangzhou, China and presented “AeroHaptix”.

[04/2025] Attended CHI 2025 in Yokohama, Japan and presented “VibraForge”.

[11/2024] Presented at ARIA 2024 in Toronto with our VibraForge toolkits.

[07/2024] Presented monocular depth estimation work at the Toronto Robotics Conference 2024.

[11/2023] Demonstrated “VibraForge” at ARIA 2023 in Toronto.

[06/2023] Graduated from the University of Toronto with a Bachelor’s of Applied Science.

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Selected Projects

TINTIN lunar landing RL
TINTIN: RL-Based Lunar Rocket Landing 2025
6-DoF variable-mass lander in MuJoCo with 2-DoF gimbaled thrust; PID baseline vs PPO policy; pose-targeted touchdown and fuel-efficiency metrics.

Monocular Depth Estimation results
Monocular Depth Estimation for Human-Robot Locomotion 2024
Monocular depth pipeline for human-robot walking environments: ZoeDepth baseline, metric reprojection to 3D point clouds, and iterative RANSAC to extract stair planes and dimensions.

CLEAR-Net cart-pole reinforcement learning project
CLEAR-Net: Cart-Pole Learning with Enhanced Adaptive Reinforcement Network 2024
Compared tabular Q-learning, DQN, PPO, and SAC on noisy Cart-Pole; designed noise-robust wrappers, tuned hyperparameters, and analyzed robustness under disturbances and varying noise levels.

Biped VHC walking
Geometric Nonlinear Control for Biped Walking 2024
Virtual Holonomic Constraints with polynomial gait design, feedback linearization, and terrain generalization to slopes and stairs.

Aerospace localization
Localization for Aerospace Vehicles (IMU + Stereo) 2023
Batch Gauss-Newton fusion with EKF; compared batch vs sliding-window estimators for trajectory accuracy.

Mobile robot mechatronics design
Mobile Robot Mechatronics Design Project 2023
MATLAB, SolidWorks — Designed a 3D-printed Arduino-based mobile robot in Fusion 360; implemented localization and obstacle-avoidance for maze navigation in MATLAB; commanded the robot via Bluetooth.

8x8x8 LED cube
8×8×8 LED Cube Embedded System 2022
ESP32-based driver with SPI multiplexing; API control; interactive 3D Snake and Pong demos.

Turtlebot2 SLAM & navigation
Turtlebot2 SLAM, Navigation & Perception 2022
Gmapping, frontier exploration, PID control; OpenCV perception and a CNN for 7-class emotion recognition.

Formula racing drivetrain
Electric Formula Racing Car Drive-train 2022
Planetary gearbox quadrupling torque at >90% efficiency; kinematics, stress, thermal, and vibration analyses.

Startups

Motion Picture Robotics (Cinema Robot Arm)

Robotics • 2025–present

Low-cost, 3D-printed 6-DoF cinema robot arm with FOC actuators and a vision-conditioned imitation-learning stack for dynamic camera moves.

GouPals Inc. (Cross-border Shopper Network)

Marketplace • 2024–2025

Connects buyers with travelers to source hard-to-find goods across countries, with integrated guidance for purchase, delivery, and verification.

Technical Skills

Software & Tools: Python, C++, MATLAB, ROS, MuJoCo, Isaac Sim, IsaacLab, PyTorch, Docker, Linux
Hardware & Robots: xArm, Unitree, Raspberry Pi, Jetson, Intel RealSense, Arduino, STM32, PND Adam, Booster Robot

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