Chinmay Prashanth

Graduate Research Associate · EcoRobotics Lab, ASU (Jan 2026 – Present · Mesa, AZ)

• Doctoral research in autonomous robotics for real-world environmental applications — soil remediation and field robotics.
• Developing robotics systems across simulation, sensing integration, and prototyping toward deployable platforms.

Robotics Simulation & VLA Data Engineer · Freelance — Contract Work (Aug 2025 – Dec 2025 · Remote)

• Built simulation-based data workflows for training foundation Vision-Language-Action (VLA) models.
• Turned robot task demonstrations, environment variations, and action-observation logs into structured datasets for imitation learning.
• Added data-quality checks for episode consistency, action-label alignment, and success/failure filtering with reproducible dataset generation.

Robotics & Mechatronics Engineer · Upsurge Labs (Dec 2024 – Jul 2025)

• Trained RL-based table-tennis robot policies (PPO) in NVIDIA Isaac Sim for racket motion and ball-return behavior — strong performance in simulation.
• Designed a custom 6-DOF arm (URDF modeling, joint tuning, ESP32/Jetson targets) with ROS/MoveIt planning and PID/impedance control in simulation.
• Real-world deployment was limited by high-speed perception hardware constraints; shifted to generating Isaac Sim datasets in LeRobot format — using Black Coffee Robotics' bcr_bot — for NVIDIA GR00T N1 VLA training.

Junior Research Fellow · Space Dynamics & Flight Control Lab, IIT Kanpur (Oct 2024 – Dec 2024 · Kanpur, India)

• Built an instrumented single-wheel test setup for rover wheel–terrain interaction on loose, sandy terrain.
• Developed a MATLAB EKF-based slip estimation and detection algorithm from testbed sensor data; the lab's paper built on this testbed won Best Paper (Docking & Rover Technologies) at IEEE SPACE 2025.
• Developed a six-wheeled rocker-bogie rover prototype and investigated wheel–terrain interaction models.

Venture Fellow · Researcher & Product Developer · NYU Tandon Future Labs — A/X Venture Studio (Jan 2024 – Jul 2024 · Brooklyn, NY)

• Led medical robotics research for a robotic-assisted surgical catheter, collaborating with the NYU Langone Aortic Center.
• Prototyped cable-actuated end effectors (additive manufacturing + electro-mechanical integration) and ran biocompatibility and sterilization studies.
• Refined designs with surgeons and clinicians; analyzed FDA 510(k)/CE regulatory pathways and commercialization potential.

Research Intern, Advanced Defense Systems — Naval Radars · Bharat Electronics Ltd. (Apr 2021 – May 2021 · Bengaluru, India)

• Contributed to the design and development of radar hubs for naval ships.
• Modeled functional units in SolidWorks and ran simulations in ANSYS across the radar-hub lifecycle.