Karthik Soma

Polytechnique Montréal, National Institute of Technology Tiruchirappalli

Papers

Total Citations

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About

Karthik Soma’s research lies at the intersection of swarm robotics, decentralized autonomy, and multi-robot coordination, with a focus on making collective systems both scalable and robust. His most cited work, “Congestion and Scalability in Robot Swarms: A Study on Collective Decision Making” (2023, 7 citations), critically examines the often-overlooked assumption that decentralized swarms scale without penalty, revealing how congestion and communication conflicts can fundamentally limit performance. This contribution has helped reframe how the field evaluates swarm efficiency. Soma also leads pioneering efforts in decentralized collaborative SLAM for planetary exploration, as demonstrated in his 2025 work (3 citations), which provides a real-world dataset and lessons from analogue environments—paving the way for future Moon and Mars missions. His earlier work on collective transport via sequential caging (2022, 3 citations) and connectivity-aware topology manipulation (2023, 2 citations) further showcases his ability to combine theoretical rigor with practical robotic challenges. By proving a complete set of local topology operations, Soma has given the swarm community a foundational toolkit for controlling network structure without centralized oversight. His research is essential reading for anyone interested in the real-world limits and possibilities of large-scale robot teams.