Shlok Agarwal

Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition, Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Papers

Total Citations

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About

Shlok Agarwal is a robotics researcher whose work lies at the intersection of humanoid locomotion, assistive exoskeletons, and open-source software development. His most impactful contribution is the systematic stability assessment of the Mina v2 powered lower-limb exoskeleton, a critical advance for robot-assisted balance and locomotion that directly addresses operator safety—work that has garnered 40 citations and established a quantitative framework for evaluating fall risk during gait control. Agarwal has also pushed the boundaries of bio-inspired design, investigating active toe joints to enable more natural, energy-efficient walking in humanoids, moving beyond the stiff, bent-knee gaits that plague most robots. Demonstrating a commitment to democratizing robotics research, he co-developed TOUGH (Transportable Open-Source Application Program Interface and User Interface for Generic Humanoids), a software framework that abstracts away the complexity of proprietary robot APIs, allowing code written for one humanoid to be reused on another. This contribution, while newer, promises to accelerate collaborative development across the field. Through his work on stability, biomimetic locomotion, and open-source infrastructure, Agarwal is helping to make humanoid robots safer, more agile, and more accessible to the research community.