Welcome!
I am Umashankar Nagarajan, a robotics researcher who is interested in developing assistive personal robots that will enhance the quality of our lives. Particularly, I am interested in tackling the mobile manipulation and physical interaction challenges in developing such robots. I am also interested in exploring machine learning applications to robotics that help develop robust behaviors.
I am currently working as a Senior Roboticist at X, the Moonshot Factory (Formerly Google X), Mountain View USA, where I work on control, planning and machine learning for mobile manipulation applications. Before joining X, I worked as a Researcher at Honda Research Institute, Mountain View, USA with Ambarish Goswami (Principal Scientist) on human-assist exoskeleton devices. My work focused on developing control strategies for exoskeleton devices that assist humans to balance better and avoid falls. Prior to Honda Research, I worked as a Postdoctoral Associate in Robotics at Disney Research, Pittsburgh, USA with Katsu Yamane (Senior Research Scientist) on legged balancing robots. My work focused on developing balancing controllers for bipedal robots in dynamic, unstable environments like seesaw and bongoboards.
In July 2012, I finished my PhD in Robotics at The Robotics Institute of Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), Pittsburgh, USA. I worked with Ralph Hollis (Research Professor) and George Kantor (Systems Scientist) on wheeled balancing robots with special emphasis on a robot called Ballbot (shown in the picture), a human-sized mobile robot that balances on a single ball. My work primarily focused on developing control and planning algorithms for fast, dynamic and graceful motions of wheeled balancing robots. I did my undergraduate degree in Mechanical Engineering at Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS), Pilani, India. I worked with Himanshu Dutt Sharma (Scientist, Central Electronics Engineering Research Institute and an ex-faculty of BITS) on the Autonomous Bicycle project, which is also a balancing mobile robot.