Murali Chari

Qualcomm (United Kingdom), Qualcomm (United States)

Papers

Total Citations

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About

Murali Chari is a pioneering researcher in low-cost aerial robotics, known for transforming consumer smartphones into powerful platforms for autonomous flight. His key research areas include swarm robotics, GPS-denied navigation, and cooperative control for 3D reconstruction. Chari’s major contribution lies in demonstrating that the sensors and processors found in everyday smartphones—cameras, gyroscopes, and accelerometers—can be repurposed to enable stable, autonomous flight in aerial robots. His seminal 2015 paper, “Smartphones power flying robots” (40 citations), established the feasibility of this approach, while his 2016 follow-up, “A swarm of flying smartphones” (20 citations), extended the concept to multi-robot coordination. In his 2018 work, “Autonomous flight and cooperative control for reconstruction using aerial robots powered by smartphones” (5 citations), Chari advanced cooperative control strategies for tasks like environmental mapping. By dramatically lowering the cost and complexity of aerial robotics, Chari’s work has opened new possibilities for search-and-rescue, environmental monitoring, and infrastructure inspection, making autonomous drones accessible to a wider range of researchers and practitioners.