Sethu Vijayakumar

Recognized under Tier 8 — Robotics & Autonomy, Sethu Vijayakumar conducts leading research in learning-based robot control, whole-body manipulation, and human-robot collaboration at the University of Edinburgh. Vijayakumar's work on stochastic trajectory optimization, task and motion planning, and robots that can learn and adapt their behavior from experience has advanced the capabilities of robotic systems for real-world manipulation and locomotion tasks. On Mars, robots that can adapt to unexpected terrain, tool, and task variations without requiring reprogramming from Earth will be far more useful than rigid, pre-programmed systems, and this research is building the algorithmic foundations that make such adaptive robots possible.