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Designing applications to help humanity in ways both large and small informs NSF recipient Zac Ravichandran’s approach to research

By Nicole Contosta

Zac’s goal? To design robots capable of engaging in complex task planning. Robots with different capabilities would work together and help direct responses to find survivors impacted by disasters.  “They could check for vitals and relay them back to first responders,” Zac said. Or the same applications could create an office assistant to help people locate missing objects.

This requires robots to reason with objects, terrain, and other semantic categories of interest, Zac explained. “Are you in a forest or on the street?” Zac said, adding, “Large Language Models such as Chat GPT are a promising way to provide such commonsense reasoning abilities.”

            The catalyst for Zac’s motivation results in part from his five-year employment at the MIT Lincoln Lab following his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering with a minor in computer science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. At the MIT Lincoln Laboratory, Zac worked with pilots who reported obstacles finding those lost in disaster situations. The terrain, Zac explained, created obstacles.

            During his time at the MIT Lincoln Laboratory, Zac co-authored two papers on his research such as Hierarchal Representations and Explicit Memory: Learning Effective Navigation Policies on 3D Scene Graph Neural Networks (2022). Zac participated in workshops including the Perception, Action, and Learning Workshop. In addition, Zac led talks such as AI/ML small UAV Perception & Planning. He also advised a senior MIT student as well as interns through the Lincoln Laboratories Advanced Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (SuporUROP). In this capacity, Zac assisted students in research and career development.

At Penn, Zac enjoys rigorous research with co-advisors, Dr. Vijay Kumar and Dr. George Pappas in Information Design Systems. “I’m excited to learn and contribute to the creative and impactful research in their groups” Zac explained.

            Outside of his research, Zac enjoys reading fiction and history. He runs on the Schuylkill River trail and participated in the 2023 Philadelphia Marathon.