People

We are a new team but share a great vision: making robots ubiquitous within our societies, contribute into the most critical relevant challenges, and most of all... enjoy this great journey!

Lab Head & Principal Investigator

Dr. Kostas Alexis - Dr. Alexis is the head of the Autonomous Robots Lab and currently is a Full Professor at the Department of Engineering Cybernetics of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). Before joining NTNU, Dr. Alexis was an Associate Professor the University of Nevada, Reno and the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, where he got tenured at the end of 5-th year of work. Prior to that Dr. Alexis had been working as a Senior Researcher at the Autonomous Systems Lab (ASL) of ETH Zurich led by Prof. Roland Siegwart. Dr. Alexis obtained his PhD on Unmanned Systems Control and Collaboration under the supervision of Prof. Anthony Tzes, at the Anemos Group of the University of Patras in Greece. Dr. Alexis has been the principal or co-principal investigator within multiple national and international research projects in the US and in Europe.

PhD Candidates

Đình Huân Nguyễn
Topic: Assured learning-based navigation policies for aerial robots

Paolo De Petris
Topic: Fast and resilient collision-tolerant navigation for aerial robots

Nikhil Khedekar
Topic: Multi-modal simultaneous localization and mapping for perceptually degraded environments

Mihir Dharmadhikari
Topic: Risk-aware and Semantics-driven Informative Path Planning

Mihir Kulkarni
Topic: Resilient learning-based fast flight in cluttered environments

Jørgen Anker Olsen
Topic: Resilient Robotic Autonomy for Exploring Martian and Lunar Lava Tubes

Morten Nissov
Topic: Resilient Localization in Perceptually Degraded Environments

Special Researchers & Engineers

Taylor Wilson - Taylor Wilson is an American nuclear physicist and science advocate. In 2008, at age 14, he became the youngest person to produce nuclear fusion, using a fusor. Taylor supports our lab in matters related with radiation detection, modeling, and localization. Among others, Taylor has a keen interest in utilizing robotics for the purposes of radiation monitoring. Know more about this outstanding work at http://www.sciradioactive.com/

International Scholars

Tejal Barnwal - Sensorized Robot Paws

Mihir Kulkharni - I am currently conducting research on motion planning for multi-linked aerial robotic systems of systems.

K12 Students

New K-12 Students to join the lab next summer period. For self-motivated projects contact us.

Alumni

Graduated PhD Students

Dr. Shehryar Khattak, First position after graduation: PostDoc, Robotic Systems Lab, ETH Zurich
Dr. Tung Dang, First position after graduation: Skydio
Dr. Frank Mascarich, First position after graduation: Anduril

Postdoctoral Researchers

Dr. Christos Papachristos, First position after our lab: Assistant Professor, University of Nevada Reno
Dr. Sotirios Diamantas, First position after our lab: Assistant Professor at Tarleton State University

Other previous lab members

Satchel Hirsch - Autonomous Object Detection
Russell Reinhart - Supervised Learning for Autonomous Exploration
Harpreet Singh - Road Anomaly Detection
Valerie Pober - Ground Robot Design
Varun Nayak - Aerial Manipulator Design - BITS Pilani
Ashutosh Singandhupe - Manned aircraft detection and real-time 3D mapping systems.
Niki Silveria - Pedestrian Detection for autonomous driving technologies.
Mat Boggs - Machine learning for robot detection and fixed-wing robot development.
Dwight Boyko - Ground Robots Design.
Sidney Taylor, Davidson Academy (K-12 Outreach), Robot-blimp for indoor applications
Etzal Corona, Leg-wheel Robot Design
Jason Rush, Fixed-Wing and Autonomous Boat projects
Manuel Retana, Tension-based robotic locomotion
Ryan Gray - LiDAR based underground navigation
Grace Le - Deep Learning based thermal vision

Who We Are

We are the Autonomous Robots Lab. We are striving for advanced long-term autonomy for ubiquitous robots in the real world!