Nikhil Chavan-Dafle
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Samsung (South Korea), Samsung (United States)
Papers
14
Total Citations
1,283
H-Index
10
About
Nikhil Chavan-Dafle is a robotics researcher whose work spans robotic manipulation, dexterous in-hand manipulation, and object recognition in unstructured environments. He is perhaps best known for his pioneering contributions to *extrinsic dexterity* — the use of external forces and environmental contacts to reposition objects within a robotic hand, offering an elegant alternative to complex multi-fingered dexterous manipulation. His 2014 paper on this concept has garnered 279 citations and reshaped how researchers think about simple yet capable robotic hands. Chavan-Dafle also made significant strides in robotic pick-and-place systems, developing methods that enable robots to grasp and recognize novel objects in cluttered scenes without task-specific training — work that has collectively accumulated nearly 700 citations across multiple venues. His contributions extend to innovative hardware design, including two-phase gripper fingers that passively reorient objects during grasping, and to warehouse automation, demonstrated through MIT's participation in the Amazon Picking Challenge. His more recent work on *SimPLE*, a visuotactile learning framework trained in simulation, reflects his growing interest in bridging perception and precision manipulation — positioning him as a leading voice in next-generation, generalizable robotic systems.
Research Focus
Key Achievements
Top Papers
- 1
- 2Extrinsic dexterity: In-hand manipulation with external forces279 citations · 2014
- 3
- 4Prehensile pushing: In-hand manipulation with push-primitives111 citations · 2015
- 5
- 6A two-phase gripper to reorient and grasp45 citations · 2015
- 7A Summary of Team MIT's Approach to the Amazon Picking Challenge 201543 citations · 2016
- 8
- 9Experimental Validation of Contact Dynamics for In-Hand Manipulation31 citations · 2017
- 10