Mohan Krishnan

About

Mohan Krishnan is a prolific engineering educator and robotics researcher whose career spans foundational contributions to engineering pedagogy, autonomous robot navigation, and disaster response systems. Based at the University of Detroit Mercy, Krishnan is perhaps best known for his landmark work on capstone design education — a 15-year evolution of a two-semester senior design course that has garnered 56 citations and continues to serve as a model for competition-driven engineering curricula nationwide. His research in autonomous mobile robotics is equally distinguished, encompassing path planning algorithms — including Delaunay triangulation, artificial potential fields, and biologically-motivated neural networks — alongside fuzzy logic-based accessibility modeling for disaster environments. These contributions reflect a sustained commitment to making robots smarter and more reliable in unpredictable real-world conditions. In recent years, Krishnan has turned his attention to Search and Rescue (SAR) robotics, developing LoRa LPWAN-based communication architectures and robot platooning strategies that protect human rescuers during catastrophic events. His 2022 LoRa architecture paper has already earned 24 citations, signaling strong community interest. Across more than two decades of scholarship, Krishnan's work bridges the classroom and the field, advancing both the education of engineers and the frontier of intelligent autonomous systems.

Research Focus

Key Achievements

Top Papers

1. 1
   A competition-motivated capstone design course: the result of a fifteen-year evolution

   56 citations · 2001
2. 2
   An enhanced dynamic Delaunay triangulation-based path planning algorithm for autonomous mobile robot navigation

   25 citations · 2009
3. 3
   A Novel LoRa LPWAN-Based Communication Architecture for Search & Rescue Missions

   24 citations · 2022
4. 4
   Robot Navigation Based on Potential Field and Gradient Obtained by Bilinear Interpolation and a Grid-Based Search

   22 citations · 2022
5. 5
   A Fuzzy Based Accessibility Model for Disaster Environment

   20 citations · 2019
6. 6
   An effective vector-driven biologically-motivated neural network algorithm to real-time autonomous robot navigation

   19 citations · 2014
7. 7
   Robot Platooning Strategy for Search and Rescue Operations

   17 citations · 2021
8. 8
   A LoRa-Based Disaster Management System for Search and Rescue Mission

   15 citations · 2024
9. 9
   An effective trace-guided wavefront navigation and map-building approach for autonomous mobile robots

   9 citations · 2014
10. 10
    The magic glove: a gesture-based remote controller for intelligent mobile robots

    5 citations · 2012

Key Collaborators

Contact & Links