Autonomous Machines Lab

Faculty:  Bharadwaj Amrutur (amrutur@iisc.ac.in)

Professor in  Robert Bosch Center for Cyber-Physical Systems and  ECE Dept, Indian Institute of Science

Director (Executive), ARTPARK

Teaching:

CP 220: Mathematical Techniques for Robotics (Aug-Dec Term)

CP 260: Robotics Perception (Jan-April Term)

Project threads:

• Networked Robots: 

  • Real-Time Perception fusing Information streams from sensors from all robots and infrastructure sensors (like security cameras)

  • Algorithms for robot teams: Example convoy formation and management

  • 5G-wifi hybrid networks and edge cloud 

• Semantic Navigation: 

  • Learn semantic maps and navigate to semantic goals (e.g. "Go to Kitchen")R 

  • Active Object Detection/Search (e.g. "Where is Asimov's book?", "Find out where the student has left their backpack in the library")

  • Printed Text guided navigation and behavior

• Bi-Arm robot manipulation:

  • Algorithms for coordinated bi-arm manipulation (e.g. manipulating test tubes, beakers, instruments etc for a  chemistry lab experiment)

• Language+Vision enabled robot control: 

  • Common sense planning

• 5G Edge cloud system for  Robotics

  • Two level control framework to handle global and local resource scheduling under stochastic demands Example: Resource scheduling for a network of gNodeBs in a private network)

• Privacy, provenance preserving data sharing

  • How to share data while maintaining privacy and provenance?

Hiring:

I am looking to hire full time research or technopreneur fellows(for a 1-year duration) for each of the above projects. A research fellow will focus on exploring research questions with an aim to advance the state of the art knowledge. A technopreneur fellow will focus on technology development with PoC in mind to address a customer/market need. 

If you have a strong interest in building things (either hardware or software) and have good applied math background (probability & Linear algebra) and interest to explore ML/AI techniques and/or S/w or H/w Engineering for robots, networks etc, please send me email with an indication of which of the two fellowship streams you are interested in.

Students:

PhD: 

• Laxmi Karthikeyan, (ISRO) Topic: Multi-Modal Energy Harvesting Circuits

• Srikrishna Acharya (Joint with Prof Yogesh Simmhan - CDS), Topic: Co-Simulation of Robots and Networks

• Joji Joseph (joint with Prof Shalabh Bhatnagar - CSA), Topic: Active Object Search via an Embodied Agent 

• Alok Mathur (Airtel) Topic: Real time optimization applications at the edge for next gen networks

MTech:

• Vaibhav Yadav (joint with Prof. Suresh Sundaram):  Topic Drone Detection via Passive Techniques 

• Swapnil Mane (joint with Prof Shishir), Topic: Convoy  of Quadrupeds

• Sameeksha Singh (joint with Prof Suresh Sundaram), Topic: Drone based Manipulation tasks 

• Munjal Joshi,  Topic: Bi-Arm Manipulation

• Aswhin S, Topic: Semantic Navigation & SLAM

• Swapnil Sonawane, Topic: ChatGPT based Robust Planners

Funding

• IISc-Nokia Center for Networked Robots (2021-24), Funded by Nokia India

• IISc Hub for Robotics and Autonomous Systems Innovation Foundation  *ARTPARK* (2020-25), Funded by DST, Govt of India and Dept of IT-BT, GoK

• Robert Bosch Center for Cyber Physical Systems (2011-2024), Funded by Robert Bosch Engineering Services

• Mathematical Programming Library (2020-24), Funded by Meity, Govt of India