Nikhil Sobanbabu

I'm an incoming Computer Science PhD student at The University of Texas at Austin and an MTS Intern at Amazon FAR. I received my Master's in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University in 2026, where I worked with Prof. Guanya Shi at the LeCAR Lab on learning and control of legged robots, with a focus on improving the transferability of simulation-trained policies and enabling reliable adaptation during deployment.

At CMU, I also collaborated with the Search-Based Planning Lab on multi-agent quadrupeds. Previously, I worked with the Dynamic Robotics and Control Laboratory under Prof. Quan Nguyen on prior-guided reinforcement learning for agile legged robot control.

Previously, I received my Bachelors in Electrical Engineering from IIT Madras during which I interned as a Robotics Intern at DiFACTO Robotics and Automation focusing on navigation and recovery of in house AMR. I also worked as an Undergraduate Research Assistant at Control Engineering Laboratory with Dr. Bharath Bhikkaji on Optimal Strategies for 1vN Pursuit-Evasion games and Multi-agent Quadrotor Tracking. Apart from this I was part of Team Anveshak, a student run Mars Rover Team of IIT Madras which participates in University Rover Challenge at Mars Research Desert Station,Utah and worked as an Embedded Systems and Control Engineer, later getting promoted as Team lead for the period 2022-2023.

My research statement outlines my prior research and the directions I wish to pursue during my PhD, and can be found here.

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Research Interests

My research goal is to develop physics‑aware learning and control frameworks that enable robots to acquire scalable, contact‑rich skills and execute them robustly in the real world. I am particularly interested in Learning‑based control (Agile Locomotion, Loco‑ Manipulation and Human Motion tracking), Real2Sim2Real(System Identification, Dynamics‑Aware sim‑to‑real adaptation, Active Exploration, reality‑gap aware benchmarks) and Multi‑Robot coordination spanning algorithms and training pipelines.

Webpage / arXiv / Code / Research timeline

Webpage / arXiv / Proceedings / Code

[Webpage|Arxiv|Code]

[Website|Arxiv|Video|Code]

[Extended Abstract|Video]

[Webpage|Arxiv|Video|Code]

[Webpage|Arxiv|Video|Code]

[Webpage|Arxiv|Video|Code]

Improving Payload Adaptability of CaJun controller by Augmenting it with ℒ₁ Adaptive Control.

[Report|Poster |Code]

Investigation of different image dehazing techniques to improve terrain traversability analysis for Autonomous vehicles.

[Report |Video]

Optimal Strategies found for a 1vn game by solving the HJI-PDE equation for a 1vn game with a reach-avoid objective.

[Thesis Report]

Coordinated autonomous control of multi-agent quadrotors in a regular polygon formation with varied orientations using the in-built mellinger controller.

[Report] | [Poster]

Autonomous control of Manipulator using inverse kinematics and ROS moveit.

Autonomous navigation of an Agricultural robot to identify and pick and place bellpepers inside a greenhouse.

[Video] | [Github]

Planner chooser behaviours encoded as latent modes using monte-carlo roll outs to be robust against perturbations generating emergent transitions between modes/behaviors.

[Results Video]

Simulation environment for the single attacker, singe target, multiple defender pursuit evation differntial game.

Swing-up is done using a control from an energy based Lyapunov function. After a reaching an appropriate angle, pole-placement based stabilisation kicks in.

[Report] | [Presentation video] | [Github]

Problem Statement: Optimal pick and place of multiple objects to a given destination with payload constraints for the mobile manipulator.
Solution: Dijkstra+Modified TSP for navigation. RRT* for manipulation.

[Report] | [Github]

Fun Mini-Project

Why WASD when you can play minecraft with ESP32

Miscellaneous

Flagship event of Shaastra, IITM's Technical festival for the year 2022. Participants convert a prototype to a minimum viable product.

[Link]

• Reviewer for IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2025
• Reviewer for IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RAL) 2025
• Reviewer for Conference on Robot Learning (CoRL) 2025
• Reviewer for IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) 2025

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