About me

Hi,

I am Satheesh, currently working as a Senior Research Associate - Robotics in the Cooper Group at the Materials Innovation Factory, University of Liverpool, United Kingdom. My primary focus is to enhance safety of mobile manipulator robots to execute complex navigation and manipulation tasks in safety-critical industrial workflows (supported by GSK, PFIZER, and AstraZeneca). We have also explored using SOTA techniques in AI-driven multimodal perception, Digital Twin (Sim2Real), perception-action coupling, and Human-Robot Interaction to enhance situational awareness ability of these Mobile Robots. I am proud to mention that four of our above works were presented/published at Flagship Robotics Conference ICRA at Atlanta, and in prestigious Nature Computational Intelligence, Nature communications chemistry journals and four paper are under review. The above projects are done in collaboration with reputed Universities (Acceleration Consortium, University of Toronto and University of Rostock) and Industries.

Previously, I held a Postdoctoral Researcher position at the Human-Robot Interaction lab within the Centre for AI, Robotics, and Human-Machine Systems (IROHMS) at Cardiff University, United Kingdom. My research here focused on digital twin based online skill learning for autonomous navigation and manipulation of a Humanoid robots in dynamic industrial environments to perform collaborative tasks.

I did my PhD in Robotics and AI at Indian Institute of Information Technology and was awarded the competitive HTRA Fellowship for my doctoral research by the Ministry of Education, Govt. of India. My research focused on the coordination of multiple robots with constrained locomotion to assist manufacturing, primarily aerospace industry. Specifically, we used various Reinforcement Learning methods to address challenges related to coordinating multiple robots, multiple agents of a robot. This project was done in collaboration with University of Genova, Italy. I'm proud to share that all my impactful research findings have been disseminated through top-tier journals and conferences.

My proficiency extends beyond research into the practical realm of robotics, where I excel at leveraging tools such as ROS, ROS2, Nvidia IsaacSim, and CoppeliaSim; AI (CNNs, LLMs, VLMs, RLs); as well as programming languages like Python, MATLAB, and Java. These skills enable me to effectively address complex challenges in robotics, bridging the gap between theoretical knowledge and practical application.

In addition to my research endeavours, I bring a wealth of academic teaching and management experience, spanning 7 years. During this period, I had the privilege of instructing various courses related to robotics and AI. I was also involved in lab establishment and management activities including preparation of lab layout, risk assessments, robot procurement.

I also currently hold additional roles, including Associate Editor for IROS 2026 and reviewer for several reputable journals and top-tier international conferences.

Thanks, and regards,