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About

Nikhil Karnad is a roboticist whose research focuses on energy-efficient motion planning, multi-robot systems, and pursuit-evasion dynamics. His most impactful work addresses the critical challenge of extending battery life in mobile robots through optimal trajectory and velocity profile design. His 2014 paper "Energy-optimal trajectory planning for car-like robots" (116 citations) and its 2011 companion (41 citations) established foundational methods for minimizing energy consumption by optimizing motor usage, enabling longer autonomous operations. Karnad also made notable contributions to pursuit-evasion theory with his "Bearing-only pursuit" study (16 citations), a variant of the classic lion-and-man game. In multi-robot coordination, he developed strategies for maintaining wireless connectivity in obstacle-filled environments (15 citations) and modeled human motion patterns to improve robot navigation in crowded spaces. His Ph.D. dissertation (2015) synthesized these threads, addressing motion planning for tracking adversarial, cooperative, and independent targets. Karnad’s work bridges theoretical optimization with practical deployment, particularly in telepresence and data collection applications, demonstrating how energy-aware algorithms can transform robotic systems from laboratory curiosities into field-ready tools for extended missions.