Rahul Rustagi - Homepage

About Me

I'm Rahul Rustagi. I earned my Masters in ECE from Georgia Tech, with a focus in robotics. My work centers on controls, embodied AI, and reinforcement learning—combining them to make AI systems more capable of reasoning and acting safely in the physical world. I am advised by Prof. Glen Chou.

I have spent some excellent summers as a research intern at Symbotic in Boston, Helicopter Lab at IIT Kanpur and Carleton University in Canada. I have published papers in top-tier venues such as AIAA and TCAS-II. My prior research has been covered by media outlets such as Hello-Robot Newsletter.

I am fortunate to be co-advised by Prof. Sonia Chernova during my Masters, Prof. Abhishek during my undergrad. I completed my bachelor's degree in aerospace engineering at IIT Kanpur, where I also earned minors in computer science and literature. Outside of research, I enjoy playing guitar, building robots, and hiking.

Resume / CV

Selected Publications

Vision-Based Autonomous Ship Deck Landing of an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Using Fractal ArUco Markers
Chiranjeev Prachand, Rahul Rustagi, Ritwik Shankar, Jitendra Singh, A Abhishek and K. S. Venkatesh
AIAA Scitech 2025 (American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics)

website | paper

Autonomous landing of an aircraft on a ship deck, perturbed by the winds and sea waves, is an inherently difficult task. To achieve this, we not only need to touchdown on a very small area, but we also need to time it accurately for a safe landing.

Lifetime Improvement in Rechargeable Mobile IoT Networks Using Deep Reinforcement Learning
Aditya Singh, Rahul Rustagi, Rajesh M. Hegde
IEEE TCAS II: Express Briefs (Transactions on Circuits and Systems)

website | paper

We propose a deep reinforcement learning framework for MET scheduling in IoMT networks to mitigate energy holes and improve network lifetime and stability.

Mobile Energy Transmitter Scheduling in Energy Harvesting IoT Networks using Deep Reinforcement Learning
Aditya Singh, Rahul Rustagi, Surender Redhu, Rajesh M. Hegde
IEEE WF-IoT 2022 (8th World Forum on Internet of Things)

website | paper

This work introduces an AoC-based formulation and a DRL scheduler for mobile energy transmitters in asynchronous IoT networks, improving charging efficiency over baseline methods.

View full publication list

Selected Projects

Real-Time Object-Aware Semantic Mapping with Mobile Manipulators

A semantic mapping framework built on Khronos and ORB-SLAM2 for creating a semantic map using the Hello Robot Stretch mobile manipulator. This framework creates hierarchical object-centric maps, tracking moving objects, and maintaining long-term object changes providing a contextual understanding for household navigation and mobile manipulation.

news | code

VLM-Based Action Planning

An end-to-end robotics pipeline that translates natural-language instructions into precise pick-and-place actions using a VLM-based planner.

github | demo

3D Gaussian Splatting Compression

A novel approach to compressing 3D Gaussian Splatting models by leveraging scene structure while preserving high-quality reconstruction.

paper | code

A Generalized Framework for 2D Stereo Matching using PDEs

A generalized approach for 2D stereo matching using PDE-based optimization for robust disparity estimation.

paper | code

MAV Pattern Formation

A centralized control framework for multi-agent systems to achieve pattern formation using a virtual leader-follower assignment.

problem statement | code

Autonomous Pickup-Delivery Payload using a UAV

A medium-sized UAV that autonomously navigates through a field environment to pick up and deliver objects using object detection, path planning, and an electromagnetic gripper.

problem statement | github

View all projects on GitHub

Hi! I'm Rahul Rustagi.

About Me

Selected Publications

Selected Projects