Experience

• Founder & CEO, Kinema Systems, San Francisco Bay Area (June 2015-Present)
  
• Associate Director, Robotics Systems and Software, Robotics Program, SRI International (September 2013-June 2015)
• Manager, Autonomous Mobile Manipulation Group, Willow Garage (April 2012-August 2013)
• Research Scientist, Willow Garage (October 2007-March 2012)
• Post-doctoral Researcher, GRASP Lab, University of Pennsylvania (2005-2007)

Education

• PhD, Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Pennsylvania, May 2005
• B.Tech, IIT Bombay, 1999

Awards

• 2012 OSS World Challenge Grand Prize, Open Motion Planning Library (OMPL), with Mark Moll, Ioan Sucan and Lydia Kavraki
• Radu Bogdan Rusu, Wim Meeussen, Sachin Chitta and Michael Beetz, “Laser-based perception for door and handle identification”, (Best Paper Award): Proceedings of the 2009 International Conference on Advanced Robotics, Munich, Germany, 2009 [PDF]
• Subhrajit Bhattacharya, Sachin Chitta, Vijay Kumar, Daniel Lee, “Optimization of a Planar Quadruped Dynamic Leap”, (MSC Simulation Software Best Paper Award) in Proceedings of 2008 ASME International Design Engineering Technical Conferences (IDETC). New York City, NY, August, 2008 [PDF]

Talks

• ICRA Workshop on Motion Planning for Industrial Robots, Hong Kong, 2014 (Invited Talk) [Slides]
• World Technology Network Awards, Time Lift Building, New York, 2013 (Invited Talk)
• ROS-Industrial Kickoff Meeting, Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio, Texas, 2013 (Invited Talk)
• RSS 2013 Workshop on Common Platforms in Robotic Manipulation, Berlin, Germany, 2013 (Invited Talk)
• ROSCON 2013, Stuttgart Germany, 2013 (Keynote Talk) [Video][PDF]
• ICRA Industrial Mobile Assistance Robots Workshop, Karlsruhe, Germany, 2013 (Invited Talk)

• IROS Workshop on Robot Motion Planning: Online, Reactive and in Real-Time, Vilamoura, Portugal, 2012 (Invited Talk)
• IROS Workshop on Handling ROS, Vilamoura, Portugal, 2012 (Invited Talk)
• RSS Workshop on Mobile Manipulation with Contact, Sydney, Australia, 2012 (Invited Talk)
• RSS Workshop on Mobile Manipulation in Cluttered Environments, Sydney, Australia, 2012
• ROSCON 2012, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 2012
• Department of Computer Science, Freiburg University, Freiburg, Germany, 2012 (Invited Talk)
• KUKA Robotics, Germany 2011, (Invited Talk)
• CoTeSys, Technical University Munich, Munich, Germany, 2011 (Invited Talk)
• Institute for Robotics and Mechatronics, DLR, Munich, Germany, 2011 (Invited Talk)
• International Conference on Advanced Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS), Freiburg, Germany, 2011 (Invited Talk)
• IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, Shanghai, 2011
• Healthcare Robotics Lab, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia, 2010 (Invited Talk)
• The Twenty-Fourth AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Workshop on Bridging The Gap Between Task And Motion Planning (BTAMP), Atlanta, Georgia, 2010 (Invited Talk)
• IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), Anchorage, Alaska, 2010
• Workshop on Mobile Manipulation in Human Environments, Robotics, Science and Systems (RSS), Seattle, Washington, 2009 (Invited Talk)
• Industry/University Cooperative Research Center, Center for Safety, Security, and Rescue Research Fall Meeting, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 2008 (Invited Talk)
• International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), Rome, Italy, 2007
• Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, Mumbai, India, 2006
• Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India, 2006
• ASME International Conference on Multibody Systems, Nonlinear Dynamics and Control, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 2006
• ASME International Conference on Multibody Systems, Nonlinear Dynamics and Control, Long Beach, California, 2005
• ASME International Design Engineering Technical Conferences (IDETC), Salt Lake City, Utah, 2004
• IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, New Orleans, 2004
• IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, Las Vegas, 2003
• IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, Washington DC, 2002
• IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, Maui, Hawaii, 2001

Professional Experience

• Organizer, Next-Generation Robotics: Academia, Startups and Industry, Robotics Science and Systems, Berkeley, 2014
• Representative for Willow Garage on the ROS-Industrial Consortium, 2013
• Organizer, ICRA Tutorial on Motion Planning for Mobile Manipulation: State of the art Methods and Tool, Berlin, Germany, 2013
• Program Committee, Robotics Science and Systems, Berlin, Germany, 2013
• Organizer, Workshop on Human Robot Collaboration, Robotics Science and Systems, Berlin, Germany, 2013
• Guest Editor, Special Issue on Open Source Software-Supported Robotics Research, Autonomous Robots, 2012
• Organizer, IEEE ICRA Mobile Manipulation Challenge, Minneapolis, 2012
• Program Committee, ROSCON 2012
• Program Committee, ECAI 2012
• Associate Editor, IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, San Francisco, 2011
• Program Committee, IEEE Workshop on Advanced Robotics and its Social Impacts, Half-Moon Bay, 2011
• Organizing Committee, IEEE/RSJ IROS The PR2 Workshop, San Francisco, 2011
• Organizing Committee, IEEE/RSJ IROS Tutorial on Motion Planning for Real Robots, San Francisco, 2011
• Organizing Committee, IEEE ICRA Workshop on Mobile Manipulation: Integrating Perception and Manipulation, Shanghai, 2011
• Program Committee, Robotics Science and Systems, Workshop on Strategies and Evaluation for Mobile Manipulation in Household Environments, 2010
• Organizing Committeee, IEEE ICRA Workshop on Mobile Manipulation, Anchorage, Alaska, 2010
• Program Committee, International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, 2009
• Program Committee, International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling, Workshop on Bridging The Gap Between Task And Motion Planning, 2009
• Program Committee, Robotics Science and Systems, Workshop on Mobile Manipulation in Human Environments, 2009
• Reviewer, International Journal of Robotics Research
• Reviewer, Autonomous Robots
• Reviewer, Journal of Mechanical Engineering Science
• Reviewer, International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA)
• Reviewer, International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS)
• Reviewer, Robotics Science and Systems (RSS)
• Reviewer, ASME International Conference on Multibody Systems
• Reviewer, ASME International Design Engineering Technical Conference (IDETC)
• Reviewer, International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI)
• Hiring Committee, Willow Garage
• Program Committee, PR2 Beta Program, Willow Garage