Papers
22
Total Citations
790
H-Index
11
About
Mihir Dharmadhikari is a robotics researcher whose work sits at the forefront of autonomous exploration, aerial robotics, and multi-robot systems — particularly in challenging subterranean environments. His most significant contributions center on developing intelligent path planning and navigation strategies that enable robots to operate with minimal human intervention in complex, GPS-denied settings such as underground mines, tunnels, and cave networks. Dharmadhikari played a pivotal role in Team CERBERUS, the winning team of the prestigious DARPA Subterranean Challenge finals, contributing to a robotic system-of-systems that integrated legged and aerial platforms under resilient autonomous control — a landmark achievement in the field, reflected in over 225 citations for the flagship publication. His motion primitives-based path planning framework for micro aerial vehicles (176 citations) addressed the critical challenge of fast, large-scale exploration despite limited robot endurance, and has since become an influential reference in aerial autonomy research. Beyond these headline contributions, his work on collision-tolerant aerial robots, marsupial deployment systems, and semantics-aware inspection planning demonstrates a breadth of innovation across both hardware and algorithmic fronts. With a cumulative citation record surpassing 700, Dharmadhikari's research has meaningfully advanced the practical deployment of autonomous robots in real-world, high-stakes environments.
Research Focus
Key Achievements
Top Papers
- 1CERBERUS in the DARPA Subterranean Challenge225 citations · 2022
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- 6Autonomous Cave Exploration using Aerial Robots22 citations · 2021
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- 8Enclosing and monitoring of disaster area boundary using multi-UAV network17 citations · 2022
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- 10Semantics-aware Exploration and Inspection Path Planning17 citations · 2023