Research Assistant

Arghya Chatterjee is a Ph.D. student in Intelligent Systems and Robotics at UWF and Graduate Research Assistant at IHMC advised by Dr. Robert Griffin. He has completed his bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from BUET, Bangladesh. Currently, he works at the intersections of AI, Robotic Perception and Autonomy, with a focus on implementing foundation models to humanoids in order to manipulate, navigate, and collaborate in cluttered real-world environments. His research areas for humanoids include:

• Foundation Models for Object Detection & Pose Estimation
• Learning driven Dexterous Object Manipulation
• Physics Engine, Diff. Sim, Rendering of Objects & Robots
• Synthetic Data Generation for Object Pose & Robot Learning
• SLAM & Scene Knowledge Graph for Manipulation & Navigation

At IHMC, he contributes to advancing model-based and model-free approaches for manipulation and generating scene knowledge graph with Open World Vision Language Models (VLMs) for active navigation and exploration with humanoids to support autonomous interactive manipulation, indoor building exploration, and outdoor terrestrial & space exploration missions.

Prior to IHMC, he worked on DARPA SubT challenge with NASA Jet Propulsion Lab for object detection and localization, collaborative mapping and exploration with legged, wheeled and aerial robots (Boston Dynamics Spot, Clearpath Husky) in unstructured environments (tunnel, cave, nuclear powerplant) and DARPA RACER Challenge with NASA JPL for off-road navigation with high speed vehicle from US Army (Polaris Rover).

His hobbies include gardening, swimming, singing, traveling, and YouTubing.