Nikhil Chavan-Dafle
Enabling robots to interact with the world.

 🧠AI & Robotics 🤖
 Samsung AI | MIT | CMU
My work focuses on building scene understanding and action reasoning for robotics applications. These versatile and reactive skills are essential to deploy cognizant robots in factories and warehouses, and even in our homes, hospitals, and public spaces.
At Samsung AI, I led the Robot Perception and Reasoning group to enable robotic manipulation and navigation capabilities for home robots. I completed my PhD from MIT and masters from Carnegie Mellon, where I built expertise in robot learning, manipulation planning, and reactive control. I was responsible for grasp and motion planning for MIT’s winning team for the Amazon Robotics Challenge. My work has received Best Student Paper award at RSS 2018, Amazon Robotics Best Systems Paper Award in Manipulation, and Best Video Award Finalist at ICRA 2014.