DONGHO KANG

Wasserwerkstrasse 12

8092 Zurich

Switzerland

I am a research scientist at the Robotics and AI Institute (RAI institute) based in Zurich, Switzerland 🇨🇭. I completed my doctorate in computer science in 2025 at the Computational Robotics Lab, ETH Zurich, under the supervision of Prof. Stelian Coros. My doctoral research focused on developing control algorithms that enable legged robots to move like real animals.

My ultimate goal is to create robots that exhibit lifelike, natural, and adaptive motor skills. To achieve this, my research lies at the intersection of optimal control, reinforcement learning, and data-driven character animation.

I’m originally from Seoul, South Korea 🇰🇷, where I spent the first 25 years of my life. Outside of my research, I’m a huge fan of video games and classical music, and also enjoy animation and sci-fi movies.

news

Oct 07, 2025	I’m thrilled to share that a collaborative project I was a part of, “SPiDR: A Simple Approach for Zero-Shot Safety in Sim-to-Real Transfer” has been accepted to NeurIPS 2025. Huge congrats to Yarden As for leading this excellent work!
Aug 28, 2025	After an incredible journey completing my PhD, I’m starting my next chapter as a research scientist at the RAI Institute. I am excited to join the amazing team and contribute to the mission of creating the next generations of intelligent robots. Looking forward to the exciting challenges and collaborations ahead.
Aug 18, 2025	I have successfully defended my dissertation “Animal Motion Imitation For Adaptive and Lifelike Control of Legged Robots” at ETH Zurich. A huge thanks to my supervisors Stelian Coros, Marco Hutter, committee members, amazing collaborators, and peers at Computational Robotics Lab who made this possible. It has been an amazing journey with so many unforgettable memories and valuable lessons. I am truly grateful to everyone who has shown me tremendous support.
Jul 22, 2025	“RAMBO: RL-augmented Model-based Whole-body Control for Loco-manipulation” has been accepted to IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L). Check out the project website to learn more about the paper.
Jul 14, 2025	Our paper, “Spatio-Temporal Motion Retargeting for Quadruped Robots”, co-authored with Taerim Yoon, Seungmin Kim, Minsung Ahn, Prof. Stelian Coros, and Prof. Sungjoon Choi has been accepted to IEEE Transactions on Robotics (T-RO)! Check out the project website to learn more about the paper.

selected publications

Learning Steerable Imitation Controllers from Unstructured Animal Motions

Dongho Kang, Jin Cheng, Fatemeh Zargarbashi , and 3 more authors

2025

arXiv Bib Supp Website

@misc{kang2025learning,
  title = {Learning Steerable Imitation Controllers from Unstructured Animal Motions},
  author = {Kang, Dongho and Cheng, Jin and Zargarbashi, Fatemeh and Yoon, Taerim and Choi, Sungjoon and Coros, Stelian},
  year = {2025},
  eprint = {2507.00677},
  archiveprefix = {arXiv},
  primaryclass = {cs.RO},
  url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.00677},
}

Spatio-Temporal Motion Retargeting for Quadruped Robots

Taerim Yoon, Dongho Kang, Seungmin Kim , and 4 more authors

IEEE Transactions on Robotics, 2025

arXiv Bib HTML Supp Website

@article{yoon2025spatiotemporal,
  author = {Yoon, Taerim and Kang, Dongho and Kim, Seungmin and Cheng, Jin and Ahn, Min Sung and Coros, Stelian and Choi, Sungjoon},
  journal = {IEEE Transactions on Robotics},
  title = {Spatio-Temporal Motion Retargeting for Quadruped Robots},
  year = {2025},
  volume = {41},
  number = {},
  pages = {5471-5490},
  keywords = {Robots;Robot kinematics;Legged locomotion;Trajectory;Quadrupedal robots;Artificial intelligence;Training;Kinematics;Videos;Pipelines;Legged robots;learning from demonstration;motion control;motion retargeting},
  doi = {10.1109/TRO.2025.3600123}
}

Tuning Legged Locomotion Controllers via Safe Bayesian Optimization

Daniel Widmer, Dongho Kang, Bhavya Sukhija , and 3 more authors

In Proceedings of The 7th Conference on Robot Learning , 2023

arXiv Bib HTML Supp Website

@inproceedings{widmer2023turning,
  title = {Tuning Legged Locomotion Controllers via Safe Bayesian Optimization},
  author = {Widmer, Daniel and Kang, Dongho and Sukhija, Bhavya and H\"{u}botter, Jonas and Krause, Andreas and Coros, Stelian},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of The 7th Conference on Robot Learning},
  pages = {2444--2464},
  year = {2023},
  editor = {Tan, Jie and Toussaint, Marc and Darvish, Kourosh},
  volume = {229},
  series = {Proceedings of Machine Learning Research},
  publisher = {PMLR}
}

RL + Model-Based Control: Using On-Demand Optimal Control to Learn Versatile Legged Locomotion

Dongho Kang, Jin Cheng, Miguel Zamora , and 2 more authors

IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, 2023

arXiv Bib HTML Supp Website

@article{kang2023rl,
  author = {Kang, Dongho and Cheng, Jin and Zamora, Miguel and Zargarbashi, Fatemeh and Coros, Stelian},
  journal = {IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters},
  title = {RL + Model-Based Control: Using On-Demand Optimal Control to Learn Versatile Legged Locomotion},
  year = {2023},
  volume = {8},
  number = {10},
  pages = {6619-6626},
  doi = {10.1109/LRA.2023.3307008}
}

Animal Motions on Legged Robots Using Nonlinear Model Predictive Control

Dongho Kang, Flavio De Vincenti, Naomi C. Adami , and 1 more author

In 2022 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) , 2022

Bib HTML PDF Supp Website

@inproceedings{kang2022animal,
  title = {Animal Motions on Legged Robots Using Nonlinear Model Predictive Control},
  author = {Kang, Dongho and De Vincenti, Flavio and Adami, Naomi C. and Coros, Stelian},
  booktitle = {2022 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS)},
  pages = {11955-11962},
  year = {2022},
  organization = {IEEE},
  doi = {10.1109/IROS47612.2022.9981945}
}

Animal Gaits on Quadrupedal Robots Using Motion Matching and Model-Based Control

Dongho Kang, Simon Zimmermann, and Stelian Coros

In 2021 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) , 2021

Bib HTML PDF Supp Website

@inproceedings{kang2021animal,
  title = {Animal Gaits on Quadrupedal Robots Using Motion Matching and Model-Based Control},
  author = {Kang, Dongho and Zimmermann, Simon and Coros, Stelian},
  booktitle = {2021 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS)},
  pages = {8500--8507},
  organization = {IEEE},
  year = {2021},
  doi = {10.1109/IROS51168.2021.9635838}
}