Going against advice, he stuck with his first love

Karthikeyan Yuvaraj decided to build a robot for the finalyear design project during his BTech in computer science in Amrita School of Engineering, Coimbatore. Computer science students would normally do projects in pure software. But Karthikeyan loved programming hardware (like motors, lights, sensors). Growing up in Neyveli, a small mining town in Tamil Nadu, Karthikeyan had developed a fascination for robotics, sparked by sci-fi films like Star Wars and RoboCop, and books by Isaac Asimov.
The robot he built in college created a lot of buzz, but faculty and peers told him there wasn’t much of a career in robotics. But he kept at it. And today, 15 years later, he has 11 granted patents, including five US ones, in areas related to robotics. And many major accomplishments.

Karthikeyan specialises in developing software that helps robots ‘see’ surroundings. That work intensified when he joined Drexel University, US, for a Master’s in electrical engineering, with a focus on control systems and robotics. Around this time, the US Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) launched the Darpa Robotics Challenge (DRC) with the objective of creating robots capable of responding to disasters. Karthikeyan, along with colleagues from Drexel’s Drones and Autonomous Systems Lab, secured funding from Darpa to participate in the DRC. They competed with teams from Nasa, MIT, Boston Dynamics, and Lockheed Martin. The team’s focus was on enhancing the sensing capabilities of the robot, enabling it to adeptly grasp and manipulate objects, including steering wheels and drill machines. Their work led to several peer-reviewed articles in prestigious journals, and had a profound impact on innovation in vision-centric robotic manipulation.
Karthikeyan went on to join Honeywell, where he helped create an autonomous truck unloader. These are large mobile robots with arms that can drive into delivery trucks and unload cargo. The system combines Lidar (a laser-based sensing technology) and infrared/ RGB cameras. FedEx was one of the early users of these unloaders. And some of Karthikeyan’s patents emerged from this work.
From Honeywell, Karthikeyan moved to Vicarious, a Silicon Valley startup, where he helped develop a robotic system that could teach other robots to perceive and grasp unfamiliar objects. “This resulted in the granting of a patent titled ?Method and system for generating training data’,” he says.
In March 2020, coinciding with the onset of the pandemic, Karthikeyan assumed responsibility for deploying this robot at a Pitney Bowes shipping facility in Cincinnati. “I witnessed first-hand the vital role that robots played in keeping warehouses going, as workers were restricted,” he says.
Vicarious was acquired by Google in 2020. Karthikeyan is now at HP Labs, helping develop advanced robotics and AI/computer vision solutions to create state-of-the-art video conferencing technologies.
Meanwhile, Amrita University has started a programme in robotics and AI. “I was asked to give a welcome speech to their new students,” Karthikeyan says.