M. Siva Karthik

Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad

Papers

Total Citations

H-Index

About

M. Siva Karthik is a roboticist whose research lies at the intersection of computer vision, active perception, and autonomous navigation. His work addresses a critical challenge in mobile robotics: the reliable detection of very small obstacles—objects just 0.5–3 cm in size—that elude conventional depth sensors and laser rangefinders. In his most-cited paper, "Markov Random Field based small obstacle discovery over images" (25 citations), Karthik introduced a probabilistic framework using Markov Random Fields to model spatial dependencies in homogeneous scenes, enabling robots to identify tiny hazards that standard algorithms miss. This contribution is foundational for safe indoor robot navigation in cluttered, real-world environments. Building on this, his follow-up work, "Small Object Discovery and Recognition Using Actively Guided Robot" (9 citations), advanced the field of active perception by developing an efficient, goal-driven search strategy. Rather than exhaustively scanning every object, Karthik’s method intelligently guides a robot’s attention, dramatically reducing computational cost when searching for specific targets in large spaces. Together, these papers demonstrate his impact on making robots more perceptive and efficient, with direct applications in service robotics, autonomous inspection, and assistive technologies.