I bring up humanoid and legged robots end to end: sensors, networking and compute first, then SLAM, localization and Nav2, then the AI models that run on top. Currently at OpenMind.
I live at the seam between hardware and software. Hand me a new robot in a crate and I will get it sensing, localizing and navigating, then put the intelligence on top.
Today that means bringing up humanoid and legged platforms at OpenMind and wiring foundation models into real autonomy. Before that I spent years building wheeled robots from the chassis up, published papers about them, and taught ROS to anyone who would sit still long enough.
University of California, Riverside · M.S. Robotics, control and navigationGPA 3.88
Rajagiri School of Engineering & Technology · B.Tech Electronics and CommunicationIndiaSelected work on the OM1 and BrainPack platform, across humanoid, quadruped and biped robots.
Built the whole navigation stack: ICP based localization and SLAM tuned until it stopped surprising anyone, loop closure so long runs stay consistent, and Nav2 tuned end to end. Production ready for real autonomous work like delivery and inspection, not just demos.
A Numba accelerated correlative scan matcher fused with Nav2 AMCL and visual place recognition voting. A five state health monitor decides who owns the map to odom transform.
RTAB-Map on a Livox Mid-360 with persistent maps and Nav2 in localization mode. Tuned MPPI and SmacPlannerHybrid, and added GeoJSON no go zones for the person follower.
Decoded proprietary robot harnesses, crimped the network, and bridged Unitree and LimX robots to Jetson Thor, AGX Orin and Raspberry Pi compute over DDS. Traced a LiDAR cable fault with an oscilloscope.
Connecting LLM, VLM and VLA models to autonomous behavior, and running local inference on Jetson Orin, Thor and DGX Spark with vLLM and llama.cpp.
I work every layer, from the crimp tool to the language model.
OpenMind AGIRobotics Engineer
University of California, RiversideM.S. Robotics · Teaching Assistant · Summer camp instructor
IIT Palakkad Technology IHub FoundationProject Engineer, Mobile Robotics
Asimov RoboticsSoftware Intern, ROS Developer
TiHAN, IIT HyderabadResearch Assistant
Augsense LabsSoftware Intern, ROS Developer
Every one of these started as a bag of parts. Three became peer reviewed papers.
RTK GPS · EKFCentimeter level outdoor autonomy from RTK GPS, IMU and wheel odometry fused with an EKF.
Springer · 2025LiDAR, IMU and odometry fused with an EKF, plus a PyQt interface with voice control.
IEEE AIC · Best PaperAn affordable ROS platform for mapping and autonomous navigation.
ACM AIR · Best PaperReal time appearance based mapping for navigation where GPS cannot reach.
IEEE IAS CMD · 1stAdaptive height and width for disaster response, with toxic gas detection.
Open-RMF · ROS 2Task scheduling and traffic management for a TurtleBot3 fleet.
ROS · Multi mapRoom to room autonomy on the ANSCER AR100 with dynamic map switching and SQLite route planning.
W. Fu, L. Wu, J. Peter, C. Huyen, B. Chen, J. Liphardt
J. Peter, M. J. Thomas, S. Gokulkrishna, K. Cholappally, S. Mohan
J. Peter, M. J. Thomas, S. Mohan
J. Peter, M. J. Thomas
For students and faculty across Kerala, at IIT Ropar, at the UC Riverside BCOE Robotics Summer Camp, and as a TA for circuits and MATLAB at UCR. If it can be explained with a robot on the table, I would rather show it than slide it.
A large outdoor robot with inflatable tyres and an aluminium extrusion frame that localizes to centimeters using RTK corrections streamed over the internet.
Outdoors, the assumptions indoor stacks rely on fall apart: no walls to scan, uneven ground, changing light. This robot pairs low cost hardware with RTK GPS and sensor fusion so it can cross rough terrain and still know where it is to the centimeter.
Last mile delivery indoors: small goods, mail and groceries carried autonomously through corridors and rooms.
The robot maps a building once, then delivers on its own: you pick a destination on the screen or by voice, and it plans around people and obstacles in real time. It went from a bare prototype to a finished shell and a paper with Springer Nature.
A 3D printed ROS robot built for contactless jobs during COVID: UV sanitization, food and medicine delivery, and remote surveillance.
Autonomous robots were expensive, and the pandemic made contactless work urgent. This robot proves you can map, navigate, follow a person and stream video on an affordable, printable platform built on open source ROS.
A four wheel drive ROS robot that builds 2D and 3D maps with RTAB-Map so it can navigate where GPS cannot reach.
Encoders drift and 2D LiDAR has a short reach outdoors. Fusing several sensors and leaning on appearance based mapping gave this robot maps it could trust in places where GPS would not help.
A rescue rover that changes its own width and height to squeeze through gaps, started after the Kerala floods.
In floods, industrial accidents and pandemics, the places that need help first are often the places people cannot safely go. This rover reshapes itself to get through, sniffs for gas, looks for people and can carry a drone for the last stretch.
Coordinating a TurtleBot3 fleet with Open-RMF: task allocation, traffic lanes and conflict resolution.
One robot navigating is a solved problem. Several robots sharing corridors is a scheduling problem. Open-RMF sits above each robot's Nav2 stack and decides who goes, who waits and who reroutes.
Room to room autonomy on the ANSCER AR100: when the goal lives on another map, the robot routes through wormholes.
Big facilities are easier to map room by room, but then a single goal can span several maps. Wormholes are known transition points between maps, so the robot drives to one, swaps maps and carries on, even through a hub room when there is no direct link.
Teaching a mecanum robot to reach goals and dodge obstacles with a Deep Q-Network, built from scratch in ROS 2.
ROS ships with planners, not learners. I built the RL loop myself, proved it on TurtleSim, then moved it to a mecanum robot in Gazebo where the policy has to use sideways motion too.
An ABB IRB 120 that cleans plates the way a person would, with spiral wiping on plates placed anywhere in its workspace.
Plates land in random spots, so the arm has to plan for each one: find it, move there smoothly, wipe in a spiral, then transition to the next plate without jerks.
A laser cut, powder coated mecanum platform with custom firmware that turns ROS velocity commands into precise omnidirectional motion.
Mecanum wheels can move in any direction, and they also slip in every direction. Tight wheel control and drift correction are what make the omnidirectional motion actually usable for navigation.
A small car that stays in its lane with classical computer vision and a simple controller.
Before any learned driving, there is a camera, a threshold and a lot of tape on the floor. This car detects lane lines and steers to keep itself centered.
One of my first ROS projects: drive the turtle around a predefined path without leaving the line.
Small, silly and important. Building a game on Turtlesim is how I got comfortable with ROS, the same framework I now use on humanoids.
A chat between two ROS nodes, a talker and a listener, built to get publish and subscribe right.
Two nodes that talk to each other like a chat window. Receiving while typing means the node cannot block, so callbacks run on their own threads with AsyncSpinner.
3D printed bipedA walking biped with obstacle avoidance and voice control, printed from scratch.
Quadruped spiderStudied inverse kinematics for legged motion and implemented different gait patterns.
Photos and videos ↗Racing droneA PID tuned racing drone on a CC3D flight controller, capable of stunt maneuvers.
3D printed robot armA fully printed arm with servo control, designed in CAD and iterated on the bench.
Water body cleanerA prototype that plans GPS missions to sweep a water body and collect floating waste.
Multimodal calibration datasetRobot arms and a motion capture system collecting camera to LiDAR extrinsics across static and dynamic setups.
ROS chat appA chat between two ROS nodes built on publish and subscribe, with multithreading through AsyncSpinner.
Code ↗Automatic soap and sanitizer dispenserA touch free dispenser driven by a rack and pinion mechanism.
Watch it work ↗Home automation using IoTNodeMCU controlled sockets, triggered through IFTTT and Google Assistant.
Watch demo ↗
