News and Awards
Education
PhD in Automatic Control and Robotics
2015-2019
Completed my doctorate degree from the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, in November 2019 with the tittle of the thesis being “Positioning and Mapping for Aerial Robotics using on-board Perception for Autonomous Missions”. I received a maximum qualification of “Cum Laude” for the presented work.
Master in Avionics and Bachelors in Aerospace
2009-2014
Completed my dual degree program from Amity University, India in May 2014. My final bachelors project included progamming an autopilot for a quadrotor and my masters project included detection and counting of objects (cars) using images from quadrotors.
Work Experience
Postdoctoral Research Associate
15/03/2021–Present
University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg
Working under the guidance of Prof. Holger Voos at the Automation and Robotics Research Group of the SnT center, Unversity of Luxembourg. Researching on Mult-Modal Multi-Abstraction Situational Awareness for mobile robots focussed mostly on real world using RGB/RGBD Cameras and 3D Lidar sensors.
Navition and Perception Robotics Engineer
15/03/2020–14/03/202
Blue Ocean Robotics, Odense (Denmark)
Researched on implementing a robust Visual SLAM algorithm with map generation and re-utilization capabilities for localization and navigation of mobile robotic platforms like GOBE and UVD-R in large and dynamic indoor environments.
Postdoctoral Researcher
28/11/2019–15/03/2020
Computer Vision and Aerial Robotics Group,
Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Madrid (Spain)
Researched on the Challenge 1 of the Mohamed Bin Zayed International Robotics Competition (MBZIRC) 2020. The challenge consisted of complete autonomous interception of a ball from a target aerial robot flying at speeds of 8-5 m/s as well exploding balloons present in the arena. Our team won the Third Prize in the Grand Challenge of the Competition detaching the ball from the target aerial robot and exploding several balloons. The main research areas I contributed were:
-
State Estimation of the Aerial Robot
-
Future Trajectory Estimation of the Target Aerial Robot
-
State Machine for Exploding Balloons
Researcher and PhD Student
01/2015–11/2019
Computer Vision and Aerial Robotics Group,
Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Madrid (Spain)
During my PhD, I researched on the Indoor Localization of aerial robots using several computer vision and sensor fusion techniques. One of my notable researches included robust indoor localization of aerial robots using several semantic cues such as chairs, tables.
Additionally, I participated in several research projects such as Inspection of a Thermal Power Plant using an autonomous aerial robot as well as Inspection of Airplanes using an autonomous aerial robot. I have been the team leader in the International Micro-Aerial Vehicles competition (IMAV 2017), where our team stood second. An important team member in IMAV 2016, where our team was the only one to perform a complete autonomous mission.
I actively worked on development and maintenance our ROS-based software framework called Aerostack. Using this framework we developed several algorithms for autonomous navigation of aerial robots in indoor environments.
Visiting PhD Student
15/03/2019–31/05/2019
Aerospace Controls Lab, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston (United States)
I worked as a visiting student at the Aerospace controls Lab at the MIT. I researched on the Semantic Localization techniques for aerial robots in the indoor environments. The developed semantic SLAM algorithm was capable of running on-board the aerial robot and accurately estimating the pose of the robot at speeds of about 2m/s.
Assistant Operations Manager
07/2015–12/2015
Airpix – Unleashing Aerial View, Mumbai (India)
As Assistant Operations Manager at Airpix, I had 3 main roles:
- Designing and assembling several customizable Quadcopter systems
- R&D on several Unmanned Aerial Systems
- Data collection (Collection of aerial data for several clients)
Work Experience
Postdoctoral Research Associate
15/03/2021–Present
University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg
Working under the guidance of Prof. Holger Voos at the Automation and Robotics Research Group of the SnT center, Unversity of Luxembourg. Researching on Mult-Modal Multi-Abstraction Situational Awareness for mobile robots focussed mostly on real world using RGB/RGBD Cameras and 3D Lidar sensors.
Navition and Perception Robotics Engineer
15/03/2020–14/03/202
Blue Ocean Robotics, Odense (Denmark)
Researched on implementing a robust Visual SLAM algorithm with map generation and re-utilization capabilities for localization and navigation of mobile robotic platforms like GOBE and UVD-R in large and dynamic indoor environments.
Postdoctoral Researcher
28/11/2019–15/03/2020
Computer Vision and Aerial Robotics Group,
Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Madrid (Spain)
Researched on the Challenge 1 of the Mohamed Bin Zayed International Robotics Competition (MBZIRC) 2020. The challenge consisted of complete autonomous interception of a ball from a target aerial robot flying at speeds of 8-5 m/s as well exploding balloons present in the arena. Our team won the Third Prize in the Grand Challenge of the Competition detaching the ball from the target aerial robot and exploding several balloons. The main research areas I contributed were:
-
State Estimation of the Aerial Robot
-
Future Trajectory Estimation of the Target Aerial Robot
-
State Machine for Exploding Balloons
Researcher and PhD Student
01/2015–11/2019
Computer Vision and Aerial Robotics Group,
Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Madrid (Spain)
During my PhD, I researched on the Indoor Localization of aerial robots using several computer vision and sensor fusion techniques. One of my notable researches included robust indoor localization of aerial robots using several semantic cues such as chairs, tables.
Additionally, I participated in several research projects such as Inspection of a Thermal Power Plant using an autonomous aerial robot as well as Inspection of Airplanes using an autonomous aerial robot. I have been the team leader in the International Micro-Aerial Vehicles competition (IMAV 2017), where our team stood second. An important team member in IMAV 2016, where our team was the only one to perform a complete autonomous mission.
I actively worked on development and maintenance our ROS-based software framework called Aerostack. Using this framework we developed several algorithms for autonomous navigation of aerial robots in indoor environments.
Visiting PhD Student
15/03/2019–31/05/2019
Aerospace Controls Lab, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston (United States)
I worked as a visiting student at the Aerospace controls Lab at the MIT. I researched on the Semantic Localization techniques for aerial robots in the indoor environments. The developed semantic SLAM algorithm was capable of running on-board the aerial robot and accurately estimating the pose of the robot at speeds of about 2m/s.
Assistant Operations Manager
07/2015–12/2015
Airpix – Unleashing Aerial View, Mumbai (India)
As Assistant Operations Manager at Airpix, I had 3 main roles:
- Designing and assembling several customizable Quadcopter systems
- R&D on several Unmanned Aerial Systems
- Data collection (Collection of aerial data for several clients)
Projects
Autonomous Navigation of Mobile Robots on Construction Sites
2021-2023, Luxembourg (Luxembourg)
This project is a research collaboration between Stugalux SA and the University of Luxembourg for Autonomous Navigation of a legged robotics platform (Boston Dynamics Spot) using 3D lidar for 3D information collection on construction sites.
Autonomous Inspection of a Thermal Power Plant using an Aerial Robot
2018, Meirama, Galicia (Spain)
This project was funded by the Spanish electricity generation company Gas Natural in order to inspect their thermal power plant in Meirama, Galicia. The inspection mission was performed in three phases:
- Manual take-off
- Autonomous waypoint navigation using the 2D laser based navigation
- Manual Landing
Autonomous Inspection of Airplanes using Drones
2018-2019, Airbus, Madrid (Spain)
This project was executed in collaboration with Airbus, Spain called Drone Augmented Reality (DAR). We worked in order to develop a complete autonomous system using a drone for inspection of airplanes in order to reduce the time and cost. The developed aerial robotic platform consisted of a DJI M210 platform, with a 3D laser sensor for perception along with a high quality camera to acquire images of the airplane surfaces. The aerial robot can fly autonomously to the user commanded waypoints around the aircraft and collect images for analysis. The acquired image can then be passed to an AI based fault detection algorithm which provides the possible fault candidates for the analysis of the maintenance engineers.
Skills
Software
C/C++
ROS
Python
GIT
Matlab
Additional Skills
Robot Assembly and Integration
Drone Piloting
Team Management up to 10 member
Web Design
Skills
Software
C/C++
ROS
Python
GIT
Matlab
Additional Skills
Robot Assembly and Integration
Drone Piloting
Team Management up to 10 member
Web Design
Hobbies
I am a curious person and I am always willing to learn more every day. I have several hobbies which are increasing every time:
- I practice several sports out of which running is my favorite and I have finished several half-marathons. Amoung others rock climbing is also one of my favourites
- As I love to teach and share my knowledge, I give private classes to children between the age of 6 to 15 years.
- I also supervise several bachelors/master students in our lab for their final bachelors/masters projects.
