Bharath Gopalakrishnan
Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad, Robotics Research (United States)
Papers
5
Total Citations
119
H-Index
3
About
Bharath Gopalakrishnan is a leading researcher in autonomous robot navigation, specializing in safe motion planning for robots operating in uncertain, dynamic environments—particularly those shared with humans. His work addresses the fundamental challenge of enabling non-holonomic mobile robots to navigate safely when obstacle trajectories are unknown and unpredictable. Gopalakrishnan’s major contributions include the development of the Probabilistic Reciprocal Velocity Obstacle (PRVO) framework, which extends classical velocity obstacle methods by incorporating uncertainty, allowing multiple robots to coordinate collision avoidance with a specified probability of safety. This influential work has garnered 74 citations. He also pioneered the Time Scaled Collision Cone approach, a trajectory optimization technique that represents dynamic obstacles as bands of predicted trajectories, enabling reactive planning under motion uncertainty. His research further explores closed-form characterizations of collision-free velocity spaces for non-holonomic robots and probabilistic obstacle avoidance using Gaussian overlap methods. By rigorously modeling human intent and environmental uncertainty, Gopalakrishnan’s work bridges the gap between theoretical motion planning and real-world deployment in human-centered settings, making him a key figure in advancing safe, autonomous navigation.
Research Focus
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Top Papers
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