field robotics lab
Northeastern University’s Field Robotics lab is run under the direction of Professor Hanumant Singh. Our group of students, faculty, and collaborators work on diverse interests including photomosaicking, visual-based navigation, 3D image reconstruction, image segmentation and classification, and chemical sensors. We work with manned submersibles, remotely operated and tethered vehicles, and autonomous underwater vehicles on different aspects of these systems including docking, navigation, manipulation and software for autonomous operations.
Our research continues to take us on expeditions all over the world.
Thank you to our sponsors – ONR, NSF, NOAA, NASA, AFRL, and others.
CURRENT PERSONNEL

Hanumant Singh
Professor
Hanumant Singh joined Northeastern University’s Electrical and Computer Engineering department in January 2016. Hanumant’s interests include system architecture and algorithms for high resolution acoustic, optical, and chemical sensing; underwater vehicles (AUV, ROV, towed and Manned Vehicles); system architectures for navigation, docking and power; and the interactions between these subsystems. Contact Hanumant at .

Mithun Diddi
PhD Student
Mithun Diddi is a Ph.D candidate at Field Robotics Lab, Institute for Experiential Robotics at Northeastern University. He received his Master’s degree in Mechatronics Engineering from Northeastern University, Boston in 2018 and Bachelor’s degree in Mechatronics Engineering from SRM University, India in 2015. Mithun’s research interests include system integration, computer vision, and all-day autonomy. Contact Mithun at

Pushyami Kaveti
PhD Student
Pushyami Kaveti is a PhD candidate at the Field Robotics Laboratory from Khoury College of Computer Sciences. She received her Masters in Computer Science from University of Florida in 2014 and worked at a startup for two years as a computer vision engineer developing calibration algorithms for structured light sensors. Pushyami’s research lies at the intersection of sensor fusion, computer vision and machine learning, focused on achieving long-term autonomy for robot perception in complex and dynamic real-world scenarios. Contact Pushyami at

Colin Keil
PhD Student
Colin Keil completed is B.S. and Masters of Engineering in Mechanical Engineering at Cornell University in 2015 and 2016 respectively. Prior to starting his PhD at Northeastern, he worked at Ultra Motion, an aerospace actuator manufacturer. His main research interests focus on the intersection between code and robotics hardware applied to perception and planning in real-world environments. Colin’s current work focuses on perception for grasping, mobile robot grasping tasks, and haptic-SLAM. Contact Colin at

Jagatpreet Nir
PhD Student
Jagatpreet Nir is a PhD student exploring the area of robotic navigation algorithms. He is interested in discovering new ways to improve accuracy of Visual Inertial Navigation algorithms with bounded computational effort. Before starting his PhD, Jagatpreet worked at the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi (IITD) as a research associate on non-linear control of multi-fingered robotic hands. He also worked at a mechatronics startup as a design engineer developing motion simulators for driving training. Contact Jagatpreet at

Zhiyong Zhang
PhD Student
Zhiyong Zhang is a second year Ph.D. student in Electrical and Computer Engineering. During his time at Northeastern, he has worked on obstacle avoidance and path planning algorithms for Jetyak, the autonomous surface vessel. He has also worked on fish detection with deep neural networks for machine learning. He recently completed stereo camera online calibration with underwater imagery and is continuing to work on fish stock analysis based on the above research. Contact Zhiyong at zhang.zhiyo@northeastern.edu.

Ayush Garg
Master's Student
Ayush Garg is a Master’s student majoring in Robotics with a specialization in Electrical and Computer Engineering. He received his Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science Engineering at Manipal Institute of Technology in 2019. His research interests lie at the intersection of robotics, computer vision, and deep learning. He aims to push the current state-of-the-art perception techniques to make them more robust in challenging environments. Contact Ayush at garg.ayu@northeastern.edu.

Arvind Thamil Chelvan
Master's Student
Arvind Thamil Chelvan is a Master’s student in Robotics department with a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering. His research interests include 3D perception and SLAM for robots in challenging environments. Contact Arvind at thamilchelvan.a@northeastern.edu.

Areeba Aziz Rajput
Master's Student
Areeba Aziz Rajput earned her Bachelor’s in Electrical Engineering and is currently a Master’s student in Communications, Control and Signal Processing. She joined the Field Robotics lab in the spring of 2021 to pursue her interest in controls and signal processing research. Contact Areeba at rajput.a@northeastern.edu.

Akshath Singhal
Master's Student

Curtis Manore
Master's Student
Curtis Manore is a Master’s student in the Robotics program. He earned his Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering at the United States Military Academy at West Point. His research focuses on improving visual inertial odometry in challenging environments for vision navigation. Curtis is a Lieutenant in the U.S. Army attending Northeastern as a Military Research Fellow from MIT Lincoln Laboratory. He aims to pursue a Master’s thesis in vision-based navigation with the Field Robotics Lab. Contact Curtis at manore.c@northeastern.edu.

Aniket Gupta
Master's Student
Aniket Gupta is a Master’s student majoring in Robotics with a minor in Computer Science. He earned his Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from Delhi Technological University in 2021. His research interests include vision based navigation, dynamic obstacle avoidance, path planning, multi-agent collaboration, and swarming systems. Contact Aniket at gupta.anik@northeastern.edu.

Sushant Govindraj
Master's Student
Sushant Govindraj is a Master’s student in the Robotics program. He received his Bachelor’s degree in Electronics and Communications Engineering at Vellore Institute of Technology. Prior to joining Northeastern, he worked at the Indian Institute of Science on a project for the autonomous landing of a UAV on a dynamic platform. He also interned at GreenSight, a Boston startup, as a robotics engineer, where he worked on implementing lightweight perception and machine learning algorithms for quadrotors. His research focuses on robust machine learning and sensor fusion tools to use SLAM and 3-D perception in challenging environments. Contact Sushant at govindraj.s@northeastern.edu

Uday Raghuvanshi
Master's Student
Uday Raghuvanshi is a Master’s student majoring in Robotics with a minor in Electrical and Computer Engineering. He received his Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from Punjab Engineering College in 2021. Prior to Northeastern, he worked at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology as a Research Assistant. His research interests include computer vision, sensor fusion, machine learning, and visual-based navigation, with a focus on achieving autonomy in challenging environments. Contact Uday at raghuvanshi.u@northeastern.edu.

Arvinder Singh
Master's Student
Arvinder Singh is a Master’s student majoring in Robotics with a minor in Electrical and Computer Engineering. He earned his Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from Punjab Engineering College in 2021. Prior to joining Northeastern, he worked as a Research Assistant at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany. His research focuses on the intersection between sensor fusion, computer vision, and deep learning applied to perception and motion planning of autonomous vehicles to achieve Level 5 autonomy. Contact Arvinder at singh.arv@northeastern.edu.
RECENT EXTERNAL COLLABORATORS
- Guy Williams, University of Tasmania
- Chris Roman, University of Rhode Island
- Jeremy Wilkinson, British Antarctic Survey
- Ted Maksym, WHOI
- Seth Zippel, WHOI
- Deep Submergence Lab, WHOI
- Ryan Eustice, University of Michigan
- John Leonard, MIT
- Fiamma Straneo, UC San Diego
- Martin Ludvigsen, NTNU Norway
- Kristin Schild, University of Maine
- M. Elizabeth Clarke, NWFSC NOAA
- Abigail Powell, NWFSC NOAA
FORMER PERSONNEL
Past Postdocs
- Peter Kimball, Google
- Richard Camilli, Associate Scientist at WHOI
- Brendan Foley, Lund University
- Brian Bingham, Associate Professor at Naval Postgraduate School
- Ali Can, GE Medical Systems Research Center
- Yogesh Girdhar, Associate Scientist at WHOI
Past Students
- Vikrant Shah, Waymo
- Benjamin Deming, Morse Corp
- Lincoln Kinley, Morse Corp
- Yiwei Gan
- Samson Braun, Remote Sensing Lab
- Stephen Hagen, Morse Corp
- Abhishek Bajpayee, NVIDIA
- Yang Liu
- Antonio Antonellis Rufo, Progress towards LiDar based bicycle detection in urban environments
- Lonai Anthraper, Fetch Robotics
- Sahil Ghanghas, Pegasystems
- Darshan Jain, Sea Machines Robotics
- Zimou Gao, RoboSense LiDAR
- Afroz Khan Mohammed
- Priscilla Lin
- Thomas Sayre-McCord, MIT-WHOI Joint Program, Lilium
- Tarun Uday, Towards Improving Imaging In Scattering Media, Cimpress
- Chris Murphy, Applied Physical Sciences Corp (APS)
- Clayton Kunz, Waymo
- Geoff Gorman, US Navy
- Jeffrey Kaeli, Research Engineer at WHOI
- James Meyers, Towards A Colregs Compliant Autonomous Surface Vessel, U.S. Coast Guard
- Grace Young, Google X Tidal
- Alyssa McKenna
- Emma Kilfoyle, Amazon
- Jason Levoy
- Qiao Hu*, WHOI
- Ryan Eustice, University of Michigan, Toyota Research Institute
- Chris Roman, University of Rhode Island
- Sacha Wichers***
- Oscar Pizarro, The Australian Center for Field Robotics, Sydney
- Celeste Fowler
Past Summer Students
- Grace Young
- Alyssa McKenna
- Emma Kilfoyle
- Jason Levoy
- Chris Murphy, Summer Student Fellow, Self-Calibrating Transponder Navigation, 2005
- Jeffrey Kaeli, Guest Student, Coral Segmentation and Classification, 2005.
- Zachary Berkowitz, Summer Student Fellow, In-situ Chemical Sensors Underwater, 2004
- Jordan Pekor, Summer Student Fellow, LED array design for underwater imaging, 2003
- Nicole Nichols, Summer Minority Trainee, A Design for a Depth Upgrade to SeaBED, 2002 and 2003
- Rajesh Nadakuditi, Summer Student Fellow, Automated mosaicking of optical imagery, 2000, University of Michigan
- **Jane Canulette, Summer Student Fellow, Architectural issues in AUV design, 1999
- Gregory Fries, Summer Student Fellow, Docking for Ocean Sampling Networks, 1998
- **Lt Erik Burian, USN, Master’s Thesis, Gradient following with ABE, 1996-1997
- **Frank Weyer, Graduate Student, Stereo imaging with ABE, 1995-1996
- **Lt Cmdr Phil LeBas, USN, Master’s Thesis, Control of an AUV at low speeds, 1995-1996
- **Ralf Bachmayer, Undergraduate Thesis, Bottom following with ABE, 1995
*Co-advised with Cabell Davis
**Co-advised with Dana R. Yoerger
***Co-advised with Rob Sohn