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About me:
About me:
Hi! My name is Saurav Kumar. I'm an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, Jodhpur. Prior to this, I was a research scientist at the University of Texas at Arlington Research Institute (UTARI) and a postdoctoral fellow in the Legged System Laboratory with Dr. Hartmut Geyer at the Robotics Institute in Carnegie Mellon University. I received my PhD in Electrical Engineering under the supervision of Dr. Nicholas Gans and Dr. Robert D. Gregg at the University of Texas at Dallas (2020).
Research Interests
Research Interests
My work at the intersection of robotics, control theory, biomechanics, and rehabilitation. I develop control strategies for powered lower-limb wearable robots - such as prosthetic legs and exoskeletons - that can restore mobility for people with reduced locomotion.
Vision: Create cost-effective, plug-and-play wearable robots that automatically personalize to individual users and adapt autonomously to diverse terrains.
Impact: Empower nearly 2 million Americans living with limb loss, 6 million U.S. stroke survivors, and our aging population with safer, more accessible assistive devices.
My work on powered lower-limb wearable robots centers on two complementary themes: personalization and versatility, unified by the goal of restoring and enhancing human mobility.
Personalization: During my Ph.D., I formulated a nonlinear adaptive control framework that automatically tunes the control parameters on-the-fly-across changing walking conditions. This approach guarantees closed-loop stability, while ensuring increased user comfort.
Versatility: In my postdoctoral research, I advanced both physics-based and data-driven strategies for enabling wearable robots to adapt to different terrains. I extended the spring-loaded-inverted pendulum (SLIP) model to traverse slopes and stairs with human-like dynamics, and co-developed neural network regression-based predictors to forecast swing-leg trakectories in real-time.
By combining principles from legged‐locomotion modeling, learning algorithms, and control theory, I aim to develop a unified, plug-and-play framework for lower-limb wearable robots that is cost-efficient and autonomously adapts to diverse users and environments—ultimately empowering millions living with limb loss, stroke, or age-related mobility impairments.
News
News
09/2025: Paper Accepted in IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering! Check out what our simplified model can achieve!
08/2025: I started as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, Jodhpur in Fall 2025.
07/2023: Starting a new job at the University of Texas at Arlington Research Institute as a Research Scientist II.
05/2022: My TAC paper got finally accepted after 2 rounds of rigorous revisions !
02/2022: Our ICRA paper on Comprehensive Swing Leg Motion Predictor got accepted !
09/2020: I started my PostDoc at the Robotics Institute at CMU.
06/2020: I successfully defended my PhD !
05/2020: My journal paper on "ESC for Stiffness Auto-Tuning of a Quasi-Passive Exoskeleton" got accepted in IEEE Robotics & Automation Letters !
03/2020: Dr. Nicholas Gans, Dr. Robert D. Gregg and I are organizing a workshop on "Extremum Seeking Control in Biomedical Applications" on June 30, 2020 at American Control Conference. https://sites.google.com/view/esc4biomed/home
07/2019: Presented my work on time-invariant ESC in 2019 ACC, Philadelphia.
06/2019: My first journal paper got accepted in IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology !
07/2017: I am nominated for Best Student Paper finalist at IEEE Conference on Control Technology and Applications, Hawaii, 2017 !
Contact
Contact
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