Sunny Katyara

Robotics Technologist at IMR | Entrepreneur at Indus Brain

About Me

I am a distinguished alumnus of the Italian Institute of Technology, holding a PhD in Applied AI and Robotics. With foundational degrees in Electrical Engineering (Bachelor's) and Control Systems (Master's) completed in 2014 and 2018 respectively, my academic journey has been rigorous and fruitful. Following my post-graduate studies, I embarked on a teaching career at Sukkur IBA University as a Lecturer in the Department of Electrical Engineering. My courses spanned IoT, Controls, and Smart Systems, leveraging my expertise to mold the next generation of engineers.

During my doctoral studies, I pioneered novel frameworks such as Kernelized Synergies and Intuitive Stack-of-Tasks, which have contributed significantly to the field. Since 2022, I have been serving as a Senior Engineer at IMR, Ireland, where my responsibilities encompass supervising field engineering and crafting bespoke solutions for the manufacturing industry using collaborative robotics and Safe AI. My notable projects at IMR include ACROBA, CoreSense, Variational-Grasping, and ACCESS.

In addition to my professional endeavors, I am an Associate Editor for the journal Biomimetic Intelligence and Robotics and an Invited Editor for Robotics at MDPI. I also contribute as an active reviewer for top-tier journals and conferences such as ICRA, IROS, IEEE RAL, IEEE RAM, among others.

My research interests are positioned at the cutting edge of Deep Reinforcement Learning, Human-Robot Collaboration, Learning from Demonstration, and Active Perception. Periodically, I serve as a visiting lecturer, recently teaching a course on Robotics Sensors and Actuators to final-year students at the University of Maynooth.

I am the founder of an early-stage startup, IndusBrain, which is dedicated to developing dependable solutions combining Robotics and AI for Agricultural and Medical applications. I aspire to either join leading teams like Google DeepMind or to foster innovation through my company supported by public-private partnerships.

Recognitions

Invited Talks

Here are some of the invited talks I have given over the years.

December 15, 2023

Bench-marking Sim2Real Gap: High-fidelity Digital Twinning of Agile Manufacturing Scenarios

5th International Workshop on Functional Reverse Engineering of Machine Tools

March 07, 2024

Large Language Model For Agile Manufacturing

2nd International Multidisciplinary Conference on Emerging Trends in Engineering Technology-2024

May 10, 2024

Future of Human-Robot Collaboration

Manufacturing & Supply Chain Conference 2024

Scholarly Activities

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	Bench-marking Sim2Real Gap: High-fidelity Digital Twinning of Agile Manufacturing Scenarios Sunny Katyara, Suchita Sharma, Parveen Damacharla, Carlos Garcia, Lubina Luxmi Dhirani Bhawani Shankar Chowdhry, Functional Reverse Engineering of Machine Tools, CRC Press, 2024. [paper][video]
	“Collaborating for Success: Optimizing System Efficiency and Resilience under Industrial Settings” Sunny Katyara, Suchita Sharma, Parveen Dhamacharla, Carlos Garcia, Francis O'Farrel, Philip Long, 2023 IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots. [paper][video]
	Data-Link: High-fidelity Manufacturing Datasets for Model2Real Transfer under Industrial Settings Sunny Katyara, Mohammad Mujtahid, Court Edmondson 2023 RSS (Robotics: Science and Systems) Conference. [paper]
	Machine Intelligence for Agile Manufacturing Sunny Katyara, Lubina L.Durani, Philip Long, Ted Morell, Francis O'Farell, Court Edmondson, Bhawani S. Chowdhry Functional Reverse Engineering of Machine Tools, CRC Press, 2023. [paper]
	Learning Skills from Demonstrations: A Trend from Motion Primitives to Experience Abstraction Mehrdad Tavassoli, Sunny Katyara, Maria Pozzi, Nikhil Deshpande, Domenico Prattichizzo, and Darwin G. Caldwell IEEE Transactions on Cognitive and Developmental Systems, doi: 10.1109/TCDS.2023.3296166. [paper]
	Leveraging Kernelized Synergies on Shared Subspace for Precision Grasping and Dexterous Manipulation Sunny Katyara, Fanny Ficuciello, Darwin Caldwell, Bruno Siciliano, and Fei Chen IEEE Transactions on Cognitive and Developmental Systems, doi: 10.1109/TCDS.2021.3110406. [paper][video]
	Vision Based Adaptation to Kernelized Synergies for Human Inspired Robotic Manipulation Sunny Katyara,Fanny Ficuciello, Fei Chen, Bruno Siciliano, and Darwin G. Caldwell 2021 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation(ICRA), 2021, pp. 6491-6497, doi: 10.1109/ICRA48506.2021.9561046. [paper][video]
	Fusing Visuo-Tactile Perception into Kernelized Synergies for Robust Grasping and Fine Manipulation of Non-rigid Objects Sunny Katyara, Nikhil Deshpande, Fanny Ficuciello, Fei Chen, Bruno Siciliano, and Darwin G. Caldwell arXiv preprint arXiv:2109.07207 (2021). [paper][video]
	Formulating Intuitive Stack-of-Tasks using Visuo-Tactile Perception for Collaborative Human-Robot Fine Manipulation Sunny Katyara, Fanny Ficuciello, Tao Teng, Fei Chen, Bruno Siciliano, and Darwin G. Caldwell IEEE Transactions on Human Machine Systems (under review) 2021. [paper][video]
	Reproducible Pruning System on Dynamic Natural Plants for Field Agricultural Robots. Sunny Katyara, Fanny Ficuciello, Darwin G. Caldwell, Fei Chen, and Bruno Siciliano Springer Proceedings in Advanced Robotics (2020). [paper][video] Best Paper Award
	The importance and the limitations of sim2real for robotic manipulation in precision agriculture Rizzardo, Carlo, Sunny Katyara, Miguel Fernandes, and Fei Chen. arXiv preprint arXiv:2008.03983 (2020). [paper]
	Signal Parameter Estimation and Classification Using Mixed Supervised and Unsupervised Machine Learning Approaches Sunny Katyara, Lukasz Staszewski, and Zbigniew Leonowicz IEEE Access 8 (2020): 92754-92764. [paper]
	Leveraging a Genetic Algorithm for the Optimal Placement of Distributed Generation and the Need for Energy Management Strategies Using a Fuzzy Inference System Sunny Katyara, Muhammad Fawad Shaikh, Shoaib Shaikh, Zahid Hussain Khand, Lukasz Staszewski, Veer Bhan, Abdul Majeed, Madad Ali Shah, and Leonowicz Zbigniew. Electronics 10, no. 2 (2020): 172. [paper]