research areaseach links to the matching projects
Ackermann, differential and holonomic platforms. Nav2, global and local planners, pure pursuit.
Visual SLAM written from scratch; 3D LiDAR SLAM flown on a drone. EKF, AMCL, pose-graph optimization.
Depth cameras, ArUco pose, homography, bird's-eye-view lane pipelines.
IK, Jacobians and null-space control, visual servoing, QP whole-body control.
ACT, diffusion policy, SmolVLA, π0 — action chunking and flow matching for manipulation.
ESP32 low-level control, power distribution, Jetson, LiDAR and depth-camera integration.
publications
Soft autonomous mobile manipulators in agricultural automation – a review
Industrial Robot, Vol. 53 No. 2, pp. 376–398
Soft grippers, actuation and control, localization and motion planning for agricultural manipulators — and why integrating them, rather than any one of them, is the open problem.
research experience
Cooperative Mobile Manipulation of a Shared Payload
Researcher · IIT Bombay
- 2–3 mobile manipulators carrying one payload, with no central controller and no external tracking.
- Decentralized localization and on-board compute; local sensing only — base depth cameras and wrist cameras.
- QP-based whole-body control across base and arm under the payload's closed-chain constraint. Learning-based coordination next.
e-Yantra Robotics Competition — Theme Development
Senior Project Technical Assistant · ERTS Lab, IIT Bombay
- Build the competition themes end to end — reference implementation, simulation, hardware bring-up and the task progression students work through.
- Niti Vahan: an Ackermann vehicle driving a scaled city from one forward camera. Built the perception pipeline — bird's-eye-view homography, colour segmentation, polynomial lane fitting, obstacle layer for lane switching.
- Localization in progress: visual odometry with landmark correction, then autonomous parking. Previous theme: Krishi CoBot, an autonomous greenhouse arm-plus-base system.
Field Exploration with ROS-Powered Vehicles
Robotics Research Intern · Autonomous Robots and Multi-Systems (ARMS) Lab, IIT Bombay
Advised by Prof. Arpita Sinha
- Built a ROS 2-controlled 4WD Ackermann vehicle for field exploration — converted from an RC car, working mostly on the hardware side: electronics, circuit design and ESP32 low-level steering and drive control.
- Implemented a Kalman filter fusing IMU data with Vicon velocity estimates for accurate odometry.
- Used a pure-pursuit motion planner for autonomous waypoint navigation.
- Performed LiDAR SLAM and leveraged Nav2 AMCL for localization, with a custom motion planner for navigation.
Soft Autonomous Mobile Manipulators in Agriculture
Undergraduate Researcher · NITK Surathkal
Advised by Prof. Mervin Joe Thomas
- Reviewed soft gripping and actuation, mobile-base autonomy and motion planning for agricultural harvesting.
- Published in Industrial Robot (2026).