Khai Nguyen

prof_pic.jpg

I graduated from the MS in Mechanical Engineering–Research program at Carnegie Mellon Univeristy. I was advised by Zac Manchester as a member of the Robotic Exploration Lab, in the Robotics Institute. I worked with Jesus Tordesillas and Marco Hutter in the Robotic Systems Lab, ETH Zurich within the Robotics Student Fellowship.

Previously, I graduated with a BS in Control Engineering and Automation–Talent Program from Hanoi University of Science and Technology. I have ~2 years of experience in autopilot systems with Viettel Aerospace Institute.

Email  /  CV  /  GitHub  /  Google Scholar  /  LinkedIn  /  X


research

My goal is to address fundamental challenges in robot control and learning by: (i) leveraging structure for efficient and generalizable modeling and decision making, (ii) closing the loop between offline design and online adaptation, and (iii) providing formal guarantees for decision making under uncertainty.

I’m open to exploring various theoretical and practical aspects of robotics, drawing on my background in control theory, differentiable optimization, and machine learning.

I am seeking PhD positions beginning Fall 2025!


news

Oct 25, 2024 One paper was accepted at CoRL 2024 Workshop Differentiable Optimization Everywhere.
Oct 01, 2024 One paper was submitted to ICLR 2025.
Jul 20, 2024 Our work was featured on the Bitcraze blog – the developers of the Crazyflie.
Jul 16, 2024 We were the Runner-up of Best Poster Award, IEEE TC on Model-based Optimization for Robotics.
Jun 28, 2024 Two papers were accepted at two RSS 2024 Workshops: Frontiers of Optimization for Robotics (Spotlight Talk), and Learning for Assistive Robotics.
May 20, 2024 TinyMPC won the Best Paper Award in Automation at ICRA 2024.
Apr 05, 2024 TinyMPC was selected as a finalist for 03 ICRA Paper Awards.
Mar 22, 2024 TinyMPC with new capabilities is now available on arXiv.
Mar 15, 2024 I received the Best Poster Award at the MS Research Symposium with the TinyMPC poster.
Jan 28, 2024 TinyMPC was accepted to ICRA 2024.
Oct 30, 2023 My undergraduate research on formation control and RL was accepted to IJRNC.
Jul 01, 2023 I participated in the ETH Robotics Summer School. 🤖
Jul 01, 2023 I started my ETH Robotics Student Fellowship at RSL. 🦿
May 08, 2023 My team advanced to the semi-finals of the F1TENTH competition. 🏁
Sep 01, 2022 I joined Zac Manchester in the Robotic Exploration (REx) Lab. :rocket:
Aug 29, 2022 I started my graduate study at Carnegie Mellon University. :sparkles:


selected publications

  1. bachelor_thesis.png
    Robust Optimal Control for Nonlinear Systems Based on Adaptive Reinforcement Learning
    Bachelor’s Thesis, Hanoi University of Science and Technology, 2021
  2. tinympc_cone.png
    Code Generation for Conic Model-Predictive Control on Microcontrollers with TinyMPC
    Sam Schoedel*Khai Nguyen*, Elakhya Nedumaran, Brian Plancher, and Zachary Manchester
    2024
  1. ICRA
    tiny_mpc.png
    TinyMPC: Model-Predictive Control on Resource-Constrained Microcontrollers
    Khai Nguyen*Sam Schoedel*, Anoushka Alavilli*Brian Plancher, and Zachary Manchester
    International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2024
    🏆 Best Paper Award in Automation at ICRA 2024
    🏆 Finalists of Best Conference Paper Award and Best Student Paper Award at ICRA 2024
    🏆 Best Poster Award at CMU MechE Symposium  ~ 10%
    🏆 Runner-up of Best Poster Award, TC on Model-based Optimization for Robotics  ~ 10%
  2. IJRNC
    khai2022formation.gif
    Formation Control Scheme with Reinforcement Learning Strategy for a Group of Multiple Surface Vehicles
    Khai Nguyen, Van Trong Dang, Dinh Duong Pham, and Phuong Nam Dao
    International Journal of Robust and Nonlinear Control (IJRNC), 2024
  1. CoRL
    deqmpc.png
    Deep Equilibrium Model Predictive Control
    Swaminathan GurumurthyKhai Nguyen, Arun Bishop, Zachary Manchester, and Zico Kolter
    In CoRL Workshop Differentiable Optimization Everywhere, 2024
  2. RSS
    RSS24W-OptimizingatAllScales.png
    Optimizing at All Scales: Edge (Non)linear Model Predictive Control from MCUs to GPUs
    Emre Adabag*, Xuyei Bu*Khai Nguyen* , Samuel Schoedel*, Anoushka Alavilli, Miloni Atal, William Gerard, Elakhya Nedumaran, Zachary Manchester, and Brian Plancher
    In RSS Workshop Frontiers of Optimization for Robotics, 2024
    ✨ Spotlight Talk  ~ 20%
  3. RSS
    RSS24W-Legibility.gif
    A Robot Learning System for Viewpoint-aware Legible Motion Planning
    Khai Nguyen*, Yi-Hung Chiu*, Prakrit Tyagi*, Saurav Kambil*, and Inseung Kang
    In RSS Workshop Learning for Assistive Robotics, 2024