An Oceanic Small-UAS with Near–Surface Soaring Flight Sensory Design and Onboard Deep-Learned Meteorological Perception
International Conference on Unmanned Aircraft Systems (ICUAS), 2026
Prateek Arora
PhD Candidate, CSE
University of Nevada, Reno
Developing autonomous systems capable of overcoming mobility and manipulation constraints
About
I am a PhD candidate in the Robotic Workers Lab at the University of Nevada, Reno, advised by Prof. Christos Papachristos. My research focuses on developing resilient autonomous robotic systems that can overcome mobility and manipulation constraints.
Before my PhD, I completed my Masters in Robotics at the University of Maryland, College Park, where I was a member of the Perception and Robotics Group (PRG) advised by Prof. Yiannis Aloimonos and worked on autonomous vision-based navigation for quadrotors. Earlier, I was a Research Associate at IIIT-Delhi with Dr. P.B. Sujit and Dr. Sanjit Kaul on a self-driving car project for Indian urban scenarios.
In my spare time, I fly my own custom-built FPV drone and go on hikes.
Educational & Professional Lineage
Ph.D. Candidate, Computer Science & Engineering
Robotic Workers Lab · University of Nevada, Reno
| Developing resilient autonomous robotic systems capable of overcoming mobility and manipulation constraints
Masters in Robotics
Perception & Robotics Group · University of Maryland, College Park
| Autonomous vision-based navigation for nano quadrotors
Research Associate
IIIT-Delhi
| Self-driving cars in Indian urban traffic
B.Tech, Electrical Engineering
Bharati Vidyapeeth's College of Engineering, GGSIPU
| Hexapod locomotion using inverse kinematics
Research
Publications
Verification and Validation of a Vision-Based Landing System for Autonomous VTOL Air Taxis
AIAA SciTech Forum, 2025
Towards Perpetually-Deployable Ubiquitous Aerial Robotics: An Amphibious Self-Sustainable Solar Small-UAS
ICRA 2025IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2025
UAV-Based Foliage Plant Species Classification for Semantic Characterization of Pre-Fire Landscapes
International Conference on Unmanned Aircraft Systems (ICUAS), 2024
Combined Docking-and-Recharging for a Flexible Aerial/Legged Marsupial Autonomous System
IEEE Aerospace Conference, 2023
Deep Learning–Based Reassembling of an Aerial & Legged Marsupial Robotic System–of–Systems
International Conference on Unmanned Aircraft Systems (ICUAS), 2023
The Gannet Solar–VTOL: An Amphibious Migratory UAV for Long–Term Autonomous Missions
International Conference on Unmanned Aircraft Systems (ICUAS), 2023
Towards Multi-Day Field Deployment Autonomy: A Long-Term Self-Sustainable Micro Aerial Vehicle Robot
ICRA 2023IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2023
A Multi-VTOL Modular Aspect Ratio Reconfigurable Aerial Robot
ICRA 2022IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2022
Deep-Learned Autonomous Landing Site Discovery for a Tiltrotor Micro Aerial Vehicle
International Conference on Unmanned Aircraft Systems (ICUAS), 2022
Integrated Solar Power Harvesting and Hibernation for a Recurrent-Mission VTOL Micro Aerial Vehicle
International Conference on Unmanned Aircraft Systems (ICUAS), 2022
Launching a Micro–Scout UAV from a Mobile Robotic Manipulator Arm
IEEE Aerospace Conference, 2021
Mobile Manipulation–Based Deployment of Micro Aerial Robot Scouts through Constricted Aperture-Like Ingress Points
IROS 2021IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2021Best paper finalist in two categories
Environment Reconfiguration Planning for Autonomous Robotic Manipulation to Overcome Mobility Constraints
ICRA 2021IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2021
Mobile Manipulator Robot Visual Servoing and Guidance for Dynamic Target Grasping
International Symposium on Visual Computing (ISVC), 2020
Mobile Surveillance Spheroid Robot with Static Equilibrium Camera, Leaping Mechanism and KLT Algorithm Based Detection with Tracking
International Journal of Control Theory and Applications, vol. 9, no. 41, 2016
Control of Wheelchair Dummy for Differently Abled Patients via Iris Movement Using Image Processing in MATLAB
IEEE India Conference (INDICON), 2015
Projects
Projects
Unscented Kalman Filter
Estimation of IMU orientation using an Unscented Kalman Filter.
Face Swap
End-to-end pipeline to swap faces in a video, just like Snapchat's face swap filter.
Path Planning with Differential Constraints
A* path planning with differential constraints on a TurtleBot in Gazebo.
Landing on Circular Bullseye
Estimated the 3D pose of a CCTag marker in real time to land a quadrotor on it.
Auto Panorama
Panorama stitching using deep-learning and traditional approaches.
A* Algorithm
Implemented A* to find a path from start to goal in a static map.
Dijkstra's Algorithm
Implemented Dijkstra's algorithm to find a path from start to goal in a static map.
Madgwick Filter
Estimation of IMU orientation using a Madgwick filter.
PB-Lite Boundary Detection
Boundary detection using a modified Probability of Boundary method.
Flying Through Gaps
Gaussian Mixture Model to detect coloured windows, used as feedback to autonomously fly a drone through them.
Structure from Motion
Reconstructed a 3D scene and recovered the camera poses from multiple images.
Avoid Wall using Optical Flow
Detected a wall in real time with a monocular camera on a quadrotor, then avoided it.
Safe Autonomous Navigation
Detected a bridge across a river and navigated a quadrotor to the other side by flying over it.
Stereo Pose Estimation
Estimated the 3D trajectory of a stereo-camera quadrotor using the optical flow equation.
Image Classification using CNNs
Implemented and evaluated different CNN architectures for image classification.
Camera Calibration
Estimated intrinsic camera parameters — focal length, distortion coefficients and principal point.
Pick and Place with Baxter
Simple pick and place using Baxter's ROS API with its built-in kinematics and inverse-kinematics engine.
8-Puzzle Solver
Solved the 8-piece puzzle with brute-force search to reach a goal tile configuration.