Pranay Thangeda

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Papers

2

Total Citations

11

H-Index

2

About

Pranay Thangeda is a robotics researcher whose work focuses on enabling autonomous systems to operate robustly in unknown and unpredictable environments. His key research areas include robotic manipulation, adaptive sampling, and machine learning for domain adaptation, with a particular emphasis on extraterrestrial exploration and planetary science. Thangeda’s major contributions center on developing algorithms that allow robots to adapt to novel conditions without extensive retraining. His most cited work, "Few-shot Adaptation for Manipulating Granular Materials Under Domain Shift" (2023, 7 citations), introduces a deep Gaussian process method trained with meta-learning to enable autonomous lander missions to sample granular materials on extraterrestrial bodies, even when Earth-tuned strategies fail. This work addresses a critical challenge for future space exploration missions. In "Adaptive Sampling Site Selection for Robotic Exploration in Unknown Environments" (2022, 4 citations), he tackles the problem of autonomously selecting optimal sampling locations under constraints and risk of system failure, a key capability for long-duration exploration missions. Thangeda’s research is notable for bridging the gap between simulation-trained policies and real-world deployment, directly impacting the design of autonomous systems for planetary science. His work on domain shift and adaptive sampling is foundational for next-generation robotic explorers.

Research Focus

Key Achievements

2
H-Index
2
Papers
11
Total Citations
6
Avg Citations/Paper
🏆 Most Cited Paper
Few-shot Adaptation for Manipulating Granular Materials Under Domain Shift
7 citations · 2023
📈 Most Prolific Year: 2023 (1 Papers)
🤝 Key Collaborators: 3
🏛 Institutions: University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Top Papers

  1. 1
  2. 2

Key Collaborators

Contact & Links

Available for collaboration
Content generated · 13 days ago