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About

Vishwamithra Sunkara is a robotics researcher whose work centers on collision avoidance for complex, non-spherical, and deforming objects—a critical challenge for next-generation autonomous systems. His primary contributions lie in developing mathematically rigorous collision cone strategies that move beyond the traditional, conservative circle-sphere approximations. Instead, his methods account for the exact, arbitrary shapes of robots and obstacles, including objects that deform over time, such as snake robots or swarm boundaries. This foundational work, published in a 2016 paper with 11 citations, directly enables safer and more efficient navigation in cluttered environments. Sunkara has applied these principles to bio-inspired robotics, notably in the cooperative control of hybrid-tailed robotic fish. In a highly cited 2019 paper (29 citations), he introduced collision avoidance laws for deforming objects, while another 2019 work (25 citations) demonstrated optimal cooperative collision avoidance for robotic fish actuated by ionic polymer-metal composite (IPMC) artificial muscles. His research also extends to formation control for robots with heterogeneous shapes. With a total of over 75 citations across his key works, Sunkara’s contributions are shaping the future of autonomous navigation for morphing and non-convex systems.