Publications

Journal Publications

  1. ``Semantically-Driven Deep Reinforcement Learning for Inspection Path Planning’’, G. Malczyk, M. Kulkarni and K. Alexis, IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, 2025. DOI
  2. ``Aerial Gym Simulator: A Framework for Highly Parallelized Simulation of Aerial Robots’’, M. Kulkarni, W. Rehberg and K. Alexis, IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, 2025. DOI
  3. ``Team CERBERUS Wins the DARPA Subterranean Challenge: Technical Overview and Lessons Learned’’, M. Tranzatto, et al., Field Robotics, 2022. DOI
  4. ``CERBERUS in the DARPA Subterranean Challenge’’, M. Tranzatto, et al., Science Robotics, 2022. DOI
  5. ``Autonomous Mapping and Spectroscopic Analysis of Distributed Radiation Fields using Aerial Robots’’, F. Mascarich, M. Kulkarni, P. de Petris, T. Wilson, K. Alexis, Autonomous Robots, 2022. DOI
  6. ``CERBERUS: Autonomous Legged and Aerial Robotic Exploration in the Tunnel and Urban Circuits of the DARPA Subterranean Challenge’’, M. Tranzatto, et al., Field Robotics, 2022. DOI

Conference Publications

  1. ``UniPilot: Enabling GPS-Denied Autonomy Across Embodiments’’, M. Kulkarni, et al., IEEE International Conference on Advanced Robotics (ICAR), 2025. DOI
  2. ``Neural Control Barrier Functions for Safe Navigation’’, M. Harms, M. Kulkarni, N. Khedekar, M. Jacquet, K. Alexis, IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2024. DOI
  3. ``Reinforcement Learning for Collision-free Flight Exploiting Deep Collision Encoding’’, M. Kulkarni and K. Alexis, IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2024. DOI
  4. ``Autonomous Exploration and General Visual Inspection of Ship Ballast Water Tanks using Aerial Robots’‘, M. Dharmadhikari, et al., IEEE International Conference on Advanced Robotics (ICAR), 2023. ’‘Winner - Best Paper Award’’. DOI
  5. ``Task-driven Compression for Collision Encoding based on Depth Images’’, M. Kulkarni and K. Alexis, International Symposium on Visual Computing (ISVC), 2023. DOI
  6. ``Semantically-enhanced Deep Collision Prediction for Autonomous Navigation using Aerial Robots’’, M. Kulkarni, H. Nguyen, and K. Alexis, IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2023. DOI
  7. ``Manhole Detection and Traversal for Exploration of Ballast Water Tanks using Micro Aerial Vehicles’’, M. Dharmadhikari, et al., International Conference on Unmanned Aircraft Systems (ICUAS), 2023. DOI
  8. ``MIMOSA: A Multi-Modal SLAM Framework for Resilient Autonomy against Sensor Degradation’’, N. Khedekar, M. Kulkarni and K. Alexis, IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2022. DOI
  9. ``RMF-Owl: A Collision-Tolerant Flying Robot for Autonomous Subterranean Exploration’’, P. De Petris, et al., International Conference on Unmanned Aircraft Systems (ICUAS), 2022. DOI
  10. ``Autonomous Teamed Exploration of Subterranean Environments using Legged and Aerial Robots’‘, M. Kulkarni, et al., IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2022. ’‘Winner - Outstanding Deployed Systems Paper Award’’. DOI
  11. ``Resilient Collision-tolerant Navigation in Confined Environments’’, P. De Petris, et al., IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2021. DOI
  12. ``The Reconfigurable Aerial Robotic Chain: Shape and Motion Planning’’, M. Kulkarni, H. Nguyen, and K. Alexis, IFAC World Congress, 2020. DOI

Whitepapers

  1. ``Isaac Lab: A GPU Accelerated Simulation Framework For Multi-Modal Robot Learning’’, M. Mittal et al., 2025. DOI
  2. ``The Unified Autonomy Stack: Toward a Blueprint for Generalizable Robot Autonomy’’, M. Dharmadhikari et al., 2023. DOI

Book Chapters

  1. ``Aerial Field Robotics’’, Mihir Kulkarni, Brady Moon, Sebastian Scherer, Kostas Alexis, Encyclopedia of Robotics. DOI