Suraj Kumar is a research scientist at U R Rao Satellite Center, Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO). Within the dynamics and control team, he works on Guidance, Navigation and Control (GNC) of space based systems and autonomous robotics for planetary exploration. One focus of his research is on building on ideas from optimal control, reinforcement learning and physics to develop novel guidance algorithms for interplanetary landing. Another is designing aerospace robotic systems which includes spacecraft docking and rendezvous for space based servicer missions, legged robotics and autonomous navigation for planetary exploration.

Education

• BTech in Avionics, Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology, Thiruvananthapuram  

• MTech in Robotics and Autonomous Systems, Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru

Research Interests

Guidance, Navigation and Control

• Development of Guidance, Navigation and Control algorithms for lunar and mars landing, spacecraft rendezvous and docking, ascent and re-entry missions 

• Physics informed machine learning approaches for solving fuel optimal and time optimal guidance problems for space based systems

Optimal Control and Physics Informed Machine Learning

• Development of efficient computational methods for solving constrained optimal control problems 

• Development of physics informed machine learning techniques for learning optimal controllers for space based systems

• Value based reinforcement learning methods for solving aerospace optimal control problems

Modelling and Simulation

• Multibody dynamics modelling of serial and parallel robots, contact based modelling

• Data-driven approaches for modelling physical systems

•  High fidelity dynamics engine and simulation package for high stakes missions such as interplanetary landing and docking

Legged Robotics for Planetary Exploration

• Development of legged robots for micro-gravity environments

• Development of Autonomous navigation for planetary exploration

• Learning and Control of Bipedal and Quadrupedal Robots

Real Time Convex Optimization

• Development of real time convex optimization solvers for resource constrained space-based systems