Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Electrical Engineering & Computer Science
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA

E-mail: vpilania [dot] sfu [at] proton [dot] me
Ph.D. Thesis: Link

Research Interests: Autonomous Mobile Manipulation, Motion Planning under Uncertainty, Decision Making under Uncertainty (POMDP, RL), Autonomous Driving.

Key Algorithmic Contributions: Link

• Ph.D., Simon Fraser University, Canada, 2015
• B.Tech. (Hons.) & M.Tech, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, India, 2009

• Vinay Pilania, Dale McConachie, Brent Griffin, Jason J. Corso, Dmitry Berenson, “A Task-Oriented Approach for Retrieving an Object from a Pile”, IEEE International Conference on Robotics & Automation (submitted), 2018. [PDF]
• Vinay Pilania and Kamal Gupta, "Autonomous System for Mobile Pick-and-Place Task in Unknown Environments", IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine (submitted), 2019. [PDF]
• Vinay Pilania and Kamal Gupta, "Mobile Manipulator Planning under Uncertainty in Unknown Environments", International Journal of Robotics Research , Volume 37, Issue 2-3, January 2018. [PDF] [Sage Link]
• Vinay Pilania and Kamal Gupta, "Localization Aware Sampling and Connection Strategies for Incremental Motion Planning under Uncertainty", Autonomous Robots, Volume 41, Issue 1, January 2017, pp. 111-132. [PDF] [Springer Link]
• Vinay Pilania and Kamal Gupta, "A Hierarchical and Adaptive Mobile Manipulator Planner with Base Pose Uncertainty", Autonomous Robots, Volume 39, Issue 1, June 2015, pp. 65-85. [PDF] [Springer Link]
• Vinay Pilania and Kamal Gupta, "A Localization Aware Sampling Strategy for Motion Planning under Uncertainty", IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), Hamburg, Sept. 2015, pp. 6093-6099. [PDF] [IEEE Link]
• Vinay Pilania and Kamal Gupta, "A Hierarchical and Adaptive Mobile Manipulator Planner", IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots (Humanoids), Madrid, November 2014, pp. 45-51. [PDF] [IEEE Link]

ICRA 2018: A Task-Oriented Approach for Retrieving an Object from a Pile.
Demonstrate our NBO (Next Best Option) planner using line and square experiments.

IJRR: Demonstrate our autonomous and integrated system for mobile pick-and-place tasks in unknown environment.
Uses our HAMP-BUA mobile manipulator planner. (left) Real experiment, (right) Simulation.