Personal Website: https://sumanthtangirala.com
Email: sumanth.t@rutgers.edu
I am a Ph.D. student in Computer Science at Rutgers University, where I work under the advisement of Dr. Kostas E. Bekris. As an NSF-NRT Fellow in the SOCRATES program, my research lies at the critical intersection of robotics, machine learning, and human-robot interaction. My primary focus is developing planning algorithms that enable robots to navigate effectively in dynamic, unstructured environments. I am particularly passionate about addressing the challenges of safe, verifiable planning and social navigation to ensure seamless human-robot interactions.
My recent work includes contributions to kinodynamic planning for high-velocity mobile robots, which formed the basis of my Master’s thesis at Rutgers. I’ve co-authored several papers and worked on projects ranging from sampling-based kinodynamic replanning to the analysis of high-dimensional robot controllers. My experience spans both theoretical and practical aspects of robotics, with expertise in deep reinforcement learning, computer vision, and GPU acceleration techniques.
Prior to my doctoral studies, I earned my Master’s in Computer Science from Rutgers University, specializing in Robotics. I had a brief stint in the industry as a Software Engineer at Tekion Corp. I also conducted research at the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), working on satellite image analysis using machine learning techniques.
Publications:
2024 |
Bekris, K; Doerr, J; Meng, P; Tangirala, S The State of Robot Motion Generation Inproceedings International Symposium of Robotics Research (ISRR), Long Beach, California, 2024. @inproceedings{Bekris:2024aa, title = {The State of Robot Motion Generation}, author = {K Bekris and J Doerr and P Meng and S Tangirala}, url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.12172 https://pracsys.cs.rutgers.edu/papers/the-state-of-robot-motion-generation/}, year = {2024}, date = {2024-12-01}, booktitle = {International Symposium of Robotics Research (ISRR)}, address = {Long Beach, California}, abstract = {This paper first reviews the large spectrum of methods for generating robot motion proposed over the 50 years of robotics research culminating to recent developments. It crosses the boundaries of methodologies, which are typically not surveyed together, from those that operate over explicit models to those that learn implicit ones. The paper concludes with a discussion of the current state-of-the-art and the properties of the varying methodologies highlighting opportunities for integration.}, keywords = {}, pubstate = {published}, tppubtype = {inproceedings} } This paper first reviews the large spectrum of methods for generating robot motion proposed over the 50 years of robotics research culminating to recent developments. It crosses the boundaries of methodologies, which are typically not surveyed together, from those that operate over explicit models to those that learn implicit ones. The paper concludes with a discussion of the current state-of-the-art and the properties of the varying methodologies highlighting opportunities for integration. |
Sivaramakrishnan, A; Tangirala, S; Granados, E; Carver, N; Bekris, K Roadmaps with Gaps Over Controllers: Achieving Efficiency in Planning under Dynamics Inproceedings IEEE/RSJ Intern. Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, 2024. @inproceedings{Sivaramakrishnan:2024aa, title = {Roadmaps with Gaps Over Controllers: Achieving Efficiency in Planning under Dynamics}, author = {A Sivaramakrishnan and S Tangirala and E Granados and N Carver and K Bekris}, url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2310.03239}, year = {2024}, date = {2024-10-01}, booktitle = {IEEE/RSJ Intern. Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS)}, address = {Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates}, abstract = {This paper aims to improve the computational efficiency of motion planning for mobile robots with non-trivial dynamics through the use of learned controllers. It adopts a decoupled strategy, where a system-specific controller is first trained offline in an empty environment to deal with the robot's dynamics. For a target environment, the proposed approach constructs offline a data structure, a ``Roadmap with Gaps,'' to approximately learn how to solve planning queries in this environment using the learned controller. The nodes of the roadmap correspond to local regions. Edges correspond to applications of the learned control policy that approximately connect these regions. Gaps arise because the controller does not perfectly connect pairs of individual states along edges. Online, given a query, a tree sampling-based motion planner uses the roadmap so that the tree's expansion is informed towards the goal region. The tree expansion selects local subgoals given a wavefront on the roadmap that guides towards the goal. When the controller cannot reach a subgoal region, the planner resorts to random exploration to maintain probabilistic completeness and asymptotic optimality. The accompanying experimental evaluation shows that the approach significantly improves the computational efficiency of motion planning on various benchmarks, including physics-based vehicular models on uneven and varying friction terrains as well as a quadrotor under air pressure effects.}, keywords = {}, pubstate = {published}, tppubtype = {inproceedings} } This paper aims to improve the computational efficiency of motion planning for mobile robots with non-trivial dynamics through the use of learned controllers. It adopts a decoupled strategy, where a system-specific controller is first trained offline in an empty environment to deal with the robot's dynamics. For a target environment, the proposed approach constructs offline a data structure, a ``Roadmap with Gaps,'' to approximately learn how to solve planning queries in this environment using the learned controller. The nodes of the roadmap correspond to local regions. Edges correspond to applications of the learned control policy that approximately connect these regions. Gaps arise because the controller does not perfectly connect pairs of individual states along edges. Online, given a query, a tree sampling-based motion planner uses the roadmap so that the tree's expansion is informed towards the goal region. The tree expansion selects local subgoals given a wavefront on the roadmap that guides towards the goal. When the controller cannot reach a subgoal region, the planner resorts to random exploration to maintain probabilistic completeness and asymptotic optimality. The accompanying experimental evaluation shows that the approach significantly improves the computational efficiency of motion planning on various benchmarks, including physics-based vehicular models on uneven and varying friction terrains as well as a quadrotor under air pressure effects. |
Vieira, E; Sivaramakrishnan, A; Tangirala, S; Granados, E; Mischaikow, K; Bekris, K MORALS: Analysis of High-Dimensional Robot Controllers Via Topological Tools in a Latent Space Conference IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), Yokohama, Japan (Nominated for Best Paper Award in Automation), 2024. @conference{Vieira:2024aa, title = {MORALS: Analysis of High-Dimensional Robot Controllers Via Topological Tools in a Latent Space}, author = {E Vieira and A Sivaramakrishnan and S Tangirala and E Granados and K Mischaikow and K Bekris}, url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2310.03246}, year = {2024}, date = {2024-05-01}, booktitle = {IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA)}, address = {Yokohama, Japan (Nominated for Best Paper Award in Automation)}, abstract = {Estimating the region of attraction (πππ°) for a robotic system's controller is essential for safe application and controller composition. Many existing methods require access to a closed-form expression that limit applicability to data-driven controllers. Methods that operate only over trajectory rollouts tend to be data-hungry. In prior work, we have demonstrated that topological tools based on Morse Graphs offer data-efficient πππ° estimation without needing an analytical model. They struggle, however, with high-dimensional systems as they operate over a discretization of the state space. This paper presents Morse Graph-aided discovery of Regions of Attraction in a learned Latent Space (πΌπΎππ°π»π). The approach combines autoencoding neural networks with Morse Graphs. πΌπΎππ°π»π shows promising predictive capabilities in estimating attractors and their πππ°s for data-driven controllers operating over high-dimensional systems, including a 67-dim humanoid robot and a 96-dim 3-fingered manipulator. It first projects the dynamics of the controlled system into a learned latent space. Then, it constructs a reduced form of Morse Graphs representing the bistability of the underlying dynamics, i.e., detecting when the controller results in a desired versus an undesired behavior. The evaluation on high-dimensional robotic datasets indicates the data efficiency of the approach in πππ° estimation.}, keywords = {}, pubstate = {published}, tppubtype = {conference} } Estimating the region of attraction (πππ°) for a robotic system's controller is essential for safe application and controller composition. Many existing methods require access to a closed-form expression that limit applicability to data-driven controllers. Methods that operate only over trajectory rollouts tend to be data-hungry. In prior work, we have demonstrated that topological tools based on Morse Graphs offer data-efficient πππ° estimation without needing an analytical model. They struggle, however, with high-dimensional systems as they operate over a discretization of the state space. This paper presents Morse Graph-aided discovery of Regions of Attraction in a learned Latent Space (πΌπΎππ°π»π). The approach combines autoencoding neural networks with Morse Graphs. πΌπΎππ°π»π shows promising predictive capabilities in estimating attractors and their πππ°s for data-driven controllers operating over high-dimensional systems, including a 67-dim humanoid robot and a 96-dim 3-fingered manipulator. It first projects the dynamics of the controlled system into a learned latent space. Then, it constructs a reduced form of Morse Graphs representing the bistability of the underlying dynamics, i.e., detecting when the controller results in a desired versus an undesired behavior. The evaluation on high-dimensional robotic datasets indicates the data efficiency of the approach in πππ° estimation. |