CV

Curriculum vitae

Contact Information

Name Yash Turkar
Professional Title Autonomy Intern at Skydio and Ph.D. student in Computer Science at the University at Buffalo
Email [email protected]
Location Buffalo, NY
Website https://yash.turkar.in

Professional Summary

My research centers on utility-aware robot perception: understanding how the quality of visual data shapes downstream performance, and how robots can act to acquire more informative measurements. I am particularly interested in the perception-action loop for field robots in challenging environments, with an emphasis on active sensing, low-light vision, and robust visual navigation under real-world sensing constraints.

Experience

  • 2026 - Present

    Autonomy Intern
    Skydio
    Inspection and mapping team
    • Developed and deployed learning-based perception algorithms for distribution pole detection and localization.
  • 2022 - 2026

    Buffalo, NY

    Graduate Research Assistant
    University at Buffalo
    DRONES Lab
    • Conducted research in perception and autonomy for field robots across VLM-based view planning, active low-light imaging, and mapping-quality metrics.
    • Formulated hypotheses, designed controlled experiments and ablations, built reproducible evaluation pipelines, and validated results across simulation and field deployments.
  • 2023 - 2023

    Houston, TX

    Intern, Autonomous Robotics
    SLB
    • Built a sensing-modality evaluation framework across LiDAR, RGB, and thermal sensing for autonomous inspection on quadrupeds.
    • Produced data-driven sensor and configuration recommendations from field validation.
  • 2022 - 2022

    Houston, TX

    Intern, Autonomous Robotics
    SLB
    • Benchmarked dense SLAM with mixed simulation and field datasets for onshore inspection.
    • Improved robustness and inspection frequency in a quadruped proof-of-concept deployment.
  • 2024 - 2024

    Buffalo, NY

    Instructor and Teaching Fellow, CSE 4/568 Robotics Algorithms
    University at Buffalo
    • Completely redesigned the syllabus and created ROS-based programming assignments for more than 50 students.
    • Taught first-principles autonomy, including kinematics, probabilistic localization and mapping, planning, and navigation.
  • 2022 - 2023

    Buffalo, NY

    Teaching Assistant, CSE 4/568 Robotics Algorithms
    University at Buffalo
    • Led weekly discussions, held office hours, and graded exams.
    • Designed auto-graded assignments and maintained Piazza and the course GitHub.

Academic Interests

Research focus: Utility-aware robot perception, Active sensing, Low-light robot vision, Robust visual navigation, Field robotics

Education

  • 2022 - Present

    PhD
    University at Buffalo
    Computer Science
  • 2021 - 2023

    Master's
    University at Buffalo
    Computer Science
  • 2016 - 2020

    Bachelor's
    University of Mumbai
    Computer Engineering

Publications

Projects

  • Adaptive Illumination Control for Robot Perception

    Closed-loop illumination control for robot perception that improves visual SLAM robustness in low-light and high-dynamic-range scenes.

    • Introduced a relighting model to separate ambient illumination from light contribution and synthesize physically consistent multi-intensity training data.
    • Distilled an offline optimal intensity schedule into a real-time controller that balances SLAM utility, power consumption, and temporal smoothness.
  • NightHawk: Active Illumination Control

    Active illumination and exposure control for low-light robot perception.

    • Used Bayesian optimization and a feature-utility metric to improve feature detection and matching in low light.
    • Implemented the event-triggered optimization loop, camera and light control, and the Mfeat utility metric for field deployments.
  • INSPECTOR: Autonomous Culvert Inspection on the Erie Canal

    Deployed autonomous culvert inspection system for Erie Canal missions using a legged robot.

    • Integrated inspection sensing, navigation, and field-ready autonomy for culvert deployments on Spot.
    • Built the data-collection and autonomy workflow for constrained, low-light culvert inspection runs.
  • VISION

    Under-submission language-in-the-loop inspection work that pairs open-vocabulary perception with viewpoint planning on a legged robot.

    • Integrated VLM prompting, stereo-scale recovery, and culvert-aware planning on Spot.
    • Designed a low-cost 3D-printed pan-tilt camera gimbal controllable through ROS 2.
  • PIXER: Learning Visual Information Utility

    Lightweight model that predicts pixel-wise featureness and uncertainty to improve visual odometry with fewer features.

    • Designed the Bayesian learning pipeline and evaluation, reducing visual odometry RMSE while using substantially fewer features.
  • Empir3D: Multi-Dimensional Point Cloud Quality Assessment

    Four-axis point-cloud quality framework spanning resolution, accuracy, coverage, and artifacts.

    • Implemented metrics and analysis tools and ran SLAM and completion case studies beyond single-distance measures.
  • EARTH: Excavation Autonomy with Resilient Traversability and Handling

    Excavation autonomy framework integrating perception, planning, hydraulic control, and the TERA simulator.

    • Led perception and simulation components and integrated safe control and state-estimation modules.
  • Hex-Wife: Hex-rotor UAV Platform

    Low-cost hex-rotor UAV platform built for AUVSI SUAS 2019 autonomous flight tests and payload experiments.

    • Covered airframe and avionics design, flight-stack and state-estimation integration, controller tuning, and field validation.

Skills

Programming Languages: Python, OpenCV, Open3D, NumPy, Pandas, Torch, TensorFlow, PyTorch3D, CUDA, Java, SQL, C, C++, JAX
Robotics and Simulation: ROS, ROS 2, Gazebo, NVIDIA Omniverse Isaac, Gibson-Env, Unity, PX4
Tools and Frameworks: MATLAB, CAD, LaTeX, Linux, Git, Docker, LXC, Rerun

Reviewing

  • IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), reviewer (2024-present)
  • IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), reviewer (2025-present)
  • IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L), reviewer (2024-present)

Honors and Awards

  • 2022
    CSE Graduate Leadership Award
    University at Buffalo
  • 2019
    Just Joe Sportsmanship Award
    AUVSI SUAS

Invited Talks

Autonomous Robotics for Archaeology: IMPERO Summer School, Grosseto, Italy (remote), June 2024
Excavation Autonomy with Resilient Traversability and Handling: MOOG-UB Workshop, University at Buffalo, December 2024