Aditya Patankar

Aditya Patankar

PhD Candidate - Robotics

About Me

I am a PhD student at the Interacting Robotic Systems Laboratory at Stony Brook University, New York advised by Dr. Nilanjan Chakraborty. My primary research interests are vision-guided robotic manipulation, task-based grasp synthesis, and motion planning from demonstrations. I envision a future where robots work alongside humans, performing a repertoire of tasks beyond just pick and place operations. My research goal is to develop algorithms and technologies enabling robots to achieve this vision.

Throughout my PhD, I have worked on several projects aimed at advancing the state-of-the-art in robotic manipulation, motion planning, and grasp synthesis. I have also worked on developing solutions to real-world problems in healthcare (assistive robotics) and agriculture (containerized vertical farming using cobots). Currently, I am actively exploring the potential of utilizing foundation models (VLMs, LLMs and transformer-based architectures) in robotics, particularly for performing complex manipulation tasks, i.e. tasks with constraints on the end-effector’s motion, which may be difficult to specify analytically. Please visit the Research and Publications section for more information.

During the summer of 2024, I had the opportunity to intern at Nokia Bell Labs as part of the Modelling and Optimization Group where I was mentored by Dr. Jeongran Lee and Dr. Matthew Andrews. I worked on building 3D representations for dynamic digital twins of indoor environments using radiance field techniques with various camera sensors. This valuable experience enhanced my skills in computer vision, deep learning, and data collection in real-world environments.

Feel free to reach out to me if you are interested in my work, would like to collaborate, or if you need a reviewer for ICRA, IROS, TRO or RAL!

Download CV.

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