Rohan Chandra is currently a postdoctoral research fellow in Texas Robotics, advised by Dr. Joydeep Biswas and Dr. Peter Stone, at the University of Texas, Austin. His research focuses on algorithms and systems for enabling robots to navigate safely and efficiently among humans, like humans. Rohan obtained his MS and PhD in 2018 and 2022 from the University of Maryland advised by Dr. Dinesh Manocha, and completed his B.Tech from the Delhi Technological University, New Delhi in 2016. His doctoral thesis focused on autonomous driving in dense, heterogeneous, and unstructured traffic environments.
Rohan is a 2023 Microsoft Future Leader in Robotics and AI, 2023 KAUST Rising Star in AI, 2022 RSS Pioneer, and 2021 UMD Future Faculty Fellow. He is a finalist for the 2022 Charles A. Caramello Distinguished Dissertation Award and a recipient of the UMD 2020 summer research fellowship and the 2023 SNU PhD Award for Autonomous Navigation. His published work appears regularly in top computer vision, AI, and robotics conferences (CVPR, ICRA, IROS) and he is actively involved in participating in workshops and program committees of leading conferences in robotics, computer vision, artificial intelligence, and machine learning. Rohan is serving as an Associate Editor for RA-L.
My research focuses on algorithms and systems for deploying robots among humans, like humans. [Research Statement] [Teaching Statement] [Diversity Statement]
Feb 2024 Appointed as Guest Editor, MDPI Drones, Special Issue on Advances in Perception and Artificial Intelligence for Autonomous Vehicles!
Jan 2024 Hybrid Social Navigation accepted to ICRA 2024!
Jan 2024 DO-ICBF paper accepted to ACC 2024 (oral)!
Dec 2023 Invited Speaker at the Symposium on Indian Driving Simulation!
Dec 2023 SocialGym 2.0 accepted to AAAI (demo track) 2024!
Oct 2023 Won the Best Paper/Presentation Award at the IROS 2023 Workshop on Advances in Multi-Agent Learning for iPlan !
Sep 2023 Won the SNU PhD Talk Award!
Sep 2023 iPlan accepted as Oral at CoRL 2023!
Jun 2023 Publicity and Social Media Chair for the International Symposium on Multi-Robot & Multi-Agent Systems 2023!
Apr 2023 Finalist for the Charles A. Caramello Distinguished Dissertation Award!
Apr 2023 Organizing the first workshop on RSS 2023 Workshop on Multi-Agent Planning and Navigation in Challenging Environments !
Mar 2023 We developed SocialGym 2 for simulating multi-agent social navigation in indoor environments!
Mar 2023 SocialMAPF will be published in RA-L and presented at IROS'23!
Feb 2023 Appointed as Associate Editor for RA-L!
Jan 2023 Selected for the 2022-2023 Microsoft Future Leaders in Robotics and AI: Celebrating Diversity and Innovation Seminar Series!
Jan 2023 METEOR accepted to ICRA'23!
Sep 2023 Won the Best Paper/Presentation Award at the IROS 2023 Workshop on Advances in Multi-Agent Learning for iPlan!
Sep 2023 Won the SNU PhD Talk Award!
Jan 2023 Selected for the 2022-2023 Microsoft Future Leaders in Robotics and AI: Celebrating Diversity and Innovation Seminar Series!
Feb 2023 Selected for the Rising Stars in AI Symposium 2023, hosted at KAUST (declined)!
Oct 2022 Selected to participate in the Global Sandpit on Trustworthy Human-Machine Teaming!
May 2022 Selected as part of the 2022 RSS Pioneers Workshop!
2020 - 2021 Selected as part of the 2020-2021 cohort (22 selected out of approximately 5, 000 doctoral students at UMD) of Future Faculty Fellows.
Summer 2020 Awarded the Summer Research Fellowship by The Graduate School, UMD.
Rohan is a 2023 Microsoft Future Leader in Robotics and AI, 2023 KAUST Rising Star in AI, 2022 RSS Pioneer, and 2021 UMD Future Faculty Fellow. He is a finalist for the 2022 Charles A. Caramello Distinguished Dissertation Award and a recipient of the UMD 2020 summer research fellowship and the 2023 SNU PhD Award for Autonomous Navigation. His published work appears regularly in top computer vision, AI, and robotics conferences (CVPR, ICRA, IROS) and he is actively involved in participating in workshops and program committees of leading conferences in robotics, computer vision, artificial intelligence, and machine learning. Rohan is serving as an Associate Editor for RA-L.
News
Feb 2024 Appointed as Field Editor, ``Encyclopedia of GIS'', Springer, August 2026!Feb 2024 Appointed as Guest Editor, MDPI Drones, Special Issue on Advances in Perception and Artificial Intelligence for Autonomous Vehicles!
Jan 2024 Hybrid Social Navigation accepted to ICRA 2024!
Jan 2024 DO-ICBF paper accepted to ACC 2024 (oral)!
Dec 2023 Invited Speaker at the Symposium on Indian Driving Simulation!
Dec 2023 SocialGym 2.0 accepted to AAAI (demo track) 2024!
Oct 2023 Won the Best Paper/Presentation Award at the IROS 2023 Workshop on Advances in Multi-Agent Learning for iPlan !
Sep 2023 Won the SNU PhD Talk Award!
Sep 2023 iPlan accepted as Oral at CoRL 2023!
Jun 2023 Publicity and Social Media Chair for the International Symposium on Multi-Robot & Multi-Agent Systems 2023!
Apr 2023 Finalist for the Charles A. Caramello Distinguished Dissertation Award!
Apr 2023 Organizing the first workshop on RSS 2023 Workshop on Multi-Agent Planning and Navigation in Challenging Environments !
Mar 2023 We developed SocialGym 2 for simulating multi-agent social navigation in indoor environments!
Mar 2023 SocialMAPF will be published in RA-L and presented at IROS'23!
Feb 2023 Appointed as Associate Editor for RA-L!
Jan 2023 Selected for the 2022-2023 Microsoft Future Leaders in Robotics and AI: Celebrating Diversity and Innovation Seminar Series!
Jan 2023 METEOR accepted to ICRA'23!
Talks
- SNU PhD Award Talk at IROS 2023.
- Microsoft Future Leaders in Robotics and AI Seminar Series, 2023.
- Maryland Robotics Center Student Seminar, 2021.
- RSS 2021: Perception and Control for Autonomous Navigation in Crowded, Dynamic Environments Workshop.
- WACV 2022: Hazard Perception in Intelligent Vehicles (HPIV) Workshop.
Awards & Honors
Sep 2023 Won the Best Paper/Presentation Award at the IROS 2023 Workshop on Advances in Multi-Agent Learning for iPlan!
Sep 2023 Won the SNU PhD Talk Award!
Jan 2023 Selected for the 2022-2023 Microsoft Future Leaders in Robotics and AI: Celebrating Diversity and Innovation Seminar Series!
Feb 2023 Selected for the Rising Stars in AI Symposium 2023, hosted at KAUST (declined)!
Oct 2022 Selected to participate in the Global Sandpit on Trustworthy Human-Machine Teaming!
May 2022 Selected as part of the 2022 RSS Pioneers Workshop!
2020 - 2021 Selected as part of the 2020-2021 cohort (22 selected out of approximately 5, 000 doctoral students at UMD) of Future Faculty Fellows.
Summer 2020 Awarded the Summer Research Fellowship by The Graduate School, UMD.
Professional Activities
Feb 2024b> Appointed as Field Editor, ``Encyclopedia of GIS'', Springer, August 2026!
Feb 2024 Appointed as Guest Editor, MDPI Drones, Special Issue on Advances in Perception and Artificial Intelligence for Autonomous Vehicles!
Dec 2023 Invited Speaker at the Symposium on Indian Driving Simulation!
Apr 2023 Organizing the first workshop on RSS 2023 Workshop on Multi-Agent Planning and Navigation in Challenging Environments !
Feb 2023 Appointed as Associate Editor for RA-L!
Apr 2022 Organizing the first workshop on Behavior-driven Autonomous Driving in Unstructured Environments at IROS 2022!
Apr 2022 Invited to co-chair the Intelligent Transportation session at ICRA'22 !
January 2022 Invited speaker at the HPIV Workshop at WACV'22.
October 2021 Invited to serve on the program committee for the ICCV'21 MAIR2 Workshop.
July 2021 Invited speaker at the Perception and Control for Autonomous Navigation in Crowded, Dynamic Environments Workshop at RSS'21. Video
Publications
(Refer to google scholar for recent publications.)PhD Thesis
Towards Autonomous Driving in Dense, Heterogeneous, and Unstructured Traffic Rohan Chandra.Planning and Navigation in Challenging Environments
- Principles and guidelines for evaluating social robot navigation algorithms Anthony Francis, Claudia Pérez-d'Arpino, Chengshu Li, Fei Xia, Alexandre Alahi, Rachid Alami, Aniket Bera, Abhijat Biswas, Joydeep Biswas, Rohan Chandra, Hao-Tien Lewis Chiang, Michael Everett, Sehoon Ha, Justin Hart, Jonathan P How, Haresh Karnan, Tsang-Wei Edward Lee, Luis J Manso, Reuth Mirksy, Soeren Pirk, Phani Teja Singamaneni, Peter Stone, Ada V Taylor, Peter Trautman, Nathan Tsoi, Marynel Vazquez, Xuesu Xiao, Peng Xu, Naoki Yokoyama, Alexander Toshev, Roberto Martin-Martin in arXiv preprint.
- Disturbance Observer-based Robust Integral Control Barrier Functions for Nonlinear Systems with High Relative Degree Vrushabh Zinage, Rohan Chandra, Efstathios Bakolas in ACC 2024 (oral).
- Neural Differentiable Integral Control Barrier Functions for Unknown Nonlinear Systems with Input Constraints Vrushabh Zinage, Rohan Chandra, Efstathios Bakolas in arXiv preprint.
- Targeted Learning: A Hybrid Approach to Social Robot Navigation Amir Hossain Raj, Zichao Hu, Haresh Karnan, Rohan Chandra, Amirreza Payandeh, Luisa Mao, Peter Stone, Joydeep Biswas, Xuesu Xiao in ICRA'24.
- iPLAN: Intent-Aware Planning in Heterogeneous Traffic via Distributed Multi-Agent Reinforcement learningXiyang Wu, Rohan Chandra, Tianrui Guan, Amrit Singh Bedi, Dinesh Manocha in CoRL 2023 (oral).
- Decentralized Multi-Robot Social Navigation in Constrained Environments via Game-Theoretic Control Barrier FunctionsRohan Chandra, Vrushabh Zinage, Efstathios Bakolas, Joydeep Biswas, Peter Stone in arXiv preprint.
- SOCIALGYM 2.0: Simulator for Multi-Agent Social Robot Navigation in Shared Human SpacesRohan Chandra, Zayne Sprague, Jarrett Holtz, Joydeep Biswas in AAAI'24.
- Decentralized Social Navigation with Non-Cooperative Robots via Bi-Level OptimizationRohan Chandra, Rahul Menon, Zayne Sprague, Arya Anantula, Joydeep Biswas in arXiv preprint.
- SocialMapf: Optimal and Efficient Multi-Agent Path Finding With Strategic Agents for Social NavigationRohan Chandra, Rahul Maligi, Arya Anantula, Joydeep Biswasin IROS/RAL'23.
- GAMEOPT: Optimal Real-time Multi-Agent Planning and Control at Dynamic IntersectionsNilesh Suriyarachchi, Rohan Chandra, John S Baras, Dinesh Manocha in IEEE ITSC'22.
- GamePlan: Game-Theoretic Multi-Agent Planning with Human Drivers at Intersections, Roundabouts, and MergingRohan Chandra, Dinesh Manocha in ICRA/RAL'22.
- Game-Theoretic Planning for Risk-Aware Human DriversRohan Chandra, Mingyu Wang, Mac Schwager, Dinesh Manocha in ICRA'22.
- B-GAP: Behavior-Rich Simulation and Navigation for Autonomous DrivingAngelos Mavrogiannis, Rohan Chandra, Dinesh Manocha in IROS/RAL'22.
Modeling Agent Behavior
- METEOR: A Dense, Heterogeneous, and Unstructured Traffic Dataset With Rare BehaviorsRohan Chandra, Xijun Wang, Mridul Mahajan, Rahul Kala, Rishitha Palugulla, Chandrababu Naidu, Alok Jain, Dinesh Manocha in ICRA'23.
- Using Graph-Theoretic Machine Learning to Predict Human Driver BehaviorRohan Chandra, Aniket Bera, Dinesh Manocha in IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems, 2021.
- CMetric: A Driving Behavior Measure Using Centrality FunctionsRohan Chandra, Uttaran Bhattacharya, Trisha Mittal, Aniket Bera, Dinesh Manocha in IROS 2020.
- Graphrqi: Classifying Driver Behaviors Using Graph SpectrumsRohan Chandra, Uttaran Bhattacharya, Trisha Mittal, Xiaoyu Li, Aniket Bera, Dinesh Manocha in ICRA 2020.
Perception for Challenging Environments
- M3detr: Multi-representation, multi-scale, mutual-relation 3d object detection with transformersTianrui Guan, Jun Wang, Shiyi Lan, Rohan Chandra, Zuxuan Wu, Larry Davis, Dinesh Manocha in WACV 2022.
- SS-SFDA: Self-supervised source-free domain adaptation for road segmentation in hazardous environmentsDivya Kothandaraman, Rohan Chandra, Dinesh Manocha in ICCV'21.
- BoMuDANet: unsupervised adaptation for visual scene understanding in unstructured driving environmentsDivya Kothandaraman, Rohan Chandra, Dinesh Manocha in ICCV'21.
- Forecasting Trajectory and Behavior of Road-Agents Using Spectral Clustering in Graph-LSTMsRohan Chandra, Tianrui Guan, Srujan Panuganti, Trisha Mittal, Uttaran Bhattacharya, Aniket Bera, Dinesh Manocha in RAL/IROS 2020.
- RobustTP: End-to-End Trajectory Prediction for Heterogeneous Road-Agents in Dense Traffic with Noisy Sensor InputsRohan Chandra, Uttaran Bhattacharya, Christian Roncal, Aniket Bera, Dinesh Manocha in ACM CSCS 2019.
- TraPHic: Trajectory Prediction in Dense and Heterogeneous Traffic Using Weighted InteractionsRohan Chandra, Uttaran Bhattacharya, Aniket Bera, Dinesh Manocha in CVPR 2019.
- RoadTrack: Tracking Road Agents in Dense and Heterogeneous EnvironmentsRohan Chandra, Uttaran Bhattacharya, Tanmay Randhavane, Aniket Bera, Dinesh Manocha in ICRA 2020.
- DensePeds: Pedestrian Tracking in Dense Crowds Using Front-RVO and Sparse FeaturesRohan Chandra, Uttaran Bhattacharya, Aniket Bera, Dinesh Manocha in IROS 2019.