gokul

Research

My current research (the first 2 years of my PhD) sits squarely in the learning to plan paradigm: I develop algorithmic and probabilistic techniques that let autonomous systems plan farther and faster, learning abstractions and heuristics that accelerate long-horizon decision making. Recently though, I have started to extend my work towards planning to learn paradigm, enabling autonomous systems to actively choose the data and practice routines that will most improve their planners.

All of my papers include hardware implementations evaluated in real-world, real-time, in-the-wild robotic settings, and are theoretically grounded in machine learning (Reinforcement Learning, Diffusion Models, Vision-Language Action Models, Robot Vision etc.).

At the systems level, I focus on implementation and speedups for ML algorithms and robotic systems--building end-to-end pipelines, optimizing bottlenecks, and pushing planning and learning to real-time on hardware. (I regularly cry while implementing neural networks in C++). I am passionate about developing software for hardware, open-source contributions and translating complex theories into practical applications.

Hopefully, there will be time for everything.

I am excited to be spending the summer of 2026 with NVIDIA Logo (Seattle Robotics Lab) as a robotics research intern.

I spent the summer of 2025 at Adobe Logo Research as a research scientist intern in the multimodal group.

Publications

★ Oral (Top 5%) Belief-Conditioned One-Step Diffusion: Real-Time Trajectory Planning with Just-Enough Sensing. in 2025 Conference on Robot Learning (CoRL 2025) [PDF] [Website]

   @article{bcod2025,
        title = {Belief-Conditioned One-Step Diffusion: Real-Time Trajectory Planning with Just-Enough Sensing},
        author = {Gokul Puthumanaillam and Aditya Penumarti and Manav Vora and Paulo Padrao and Jose Fuentes and Leonardo Bobadilla and Jane Shin and Melkior Ornik},
        year = {2025},
        eprint = {2508.12166},
        archivePrefix = {arXiv},
        primaryClass = {cs.RO},
        url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.12166}
    }

★ Oral TRACE: A Self-Improving Framework for Robot Behavior Forecasting with Vision-Language Models. in 2025 International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems 2025 (IROS 2025) [PDF] [Website]

   @article{trace2025,
        title = {TRACE: A Self-Improving Framework for Robot Behavior Forecasting with Vision-
        Language Models},
        author = {Gokul Puthumanaillam and Paulo Padrao and 
        Jose Fuentes and Pranay Thangeda and William E. Schafer 
        and Jae Hyuk Song and Karan Jagdale and Leonardo Bobadilla 
        and Melkior Ornik},
        year = {2025},
        eprint = {2503.00761},
        archivePrefix = {arXiv},
        primaryClass = {cs.RO},
        url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.00761}
    }

★ Oral Motion Planning and Control with Unknown Nonlinear Dynamics through Predicted Reachability. in 2025 International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2025) [PDF]

   @article{zhang2025motion,
     title={Motion Planning and Control with Unknown Nonlinear Dynamics through 
     Predicted Reachability},
     author={Zhang, Zhiquan and Puthumanaillam, Gokul and Vora, Manav 
     and Ornik, Melkior},
     journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:2503.03633},
     year={2025}
   }

Enhancing Robot Navigation Policies with Task-Specific Uncertainty Management. in 2025 International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS 2025) [PDF] [Website]

    @article{puthumanaillam2024enhancing,
      title={Enhancing Robot Navigation Policies with Task-Specific Uncertainty Management}, 
      author={Gokul Puthumanaillam and Paulo Padrao and Jose Fuentes 
      and Leonardo Bobadilla and Melkior Ornik},
      journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:2410.15178},
      year={2024},
      note={Accepted at International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems
      (AAMAS 2025)}
    }

TAB-Fields: A Maximum Entropy Framework for Mission-Aware Adversarial Planning. in Learning for Dynamics & Control Conference (L4DC 2025) [PDF] [Website]

    @article{puthumanaillam2024tabfields,
      title={TAB-Fields: A Maximum Entropy Framework for Mission-Aware Adversarial Planning},
      author={Gokul Puthumanaillam and Jae Hyuk Song and Nurzhan Yesmagambet and 
      Shinkyu Park and Melkior Ornik},
      journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:2412.02570},
      year={2024},
      note={Accepted for presentation at L4DC 2025}
    }

The Lazy Student's Dream: ChatGPT Passing an Engineering Course on Its Own. in 2025 IFAC Symposium on Advances in Control Education (ACE 2025) [PDF] [Website]

    @article{puthumanaillam2025lazy,
      title={The Lazy Student's Dream: ChatGPT Passing an Engineering Course on Its Own},
      author={Puthumanaillam, Gokul and Bretl, Thomas and Ornik, Melkior},
      journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:2503.05760},
      year={2025}
    }

★ Oral, Top 10% ComTraQ-MPC: Meta-Trained DQN-MPC Integration for Trajectory Tracking with Limited Active Localization Updates. in 2024 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2024) [PDF] [Website]

    @article{puthumanaillam2024comtraq,
      title={ComTraQ-MPC: Meta-Trained DQN-MPC Integration for Trajectory Tracking with 
      Limited Active Localization Updates},
      author={Puthumanaillam, Gokul and Vora, Manav and Ornik, Melkior},
      journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:2403.01564},
      year={2024},
      note={Accepted at IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems 
      (IROS 2024)}
    }

Modeling and Analysis of Collision Avoidance with ACAS Xu in Verse for the GUAM Lift+ Cruise Model. in 2025 AIAA SCITECH Forum [PDF]

    @inproceedings{bullock2025modeling,
      title={Modeling and Analysis of Collision Avoidance with ACAS Xu in Verse for the GUAM Lift+ Cruise Model},
      author={Bullock, JL and Song, L and Puthumanaillam, G and Li, Y and Cheng, S and Ornik, M and Hovakimyan, N},
      booktitle={AIAA SCITECH 2025 Forum},
      pages={1323},
      year={2025}
    }

Weathering ongoing uncertainty: learning and planning in a time-varying partially observable environment. in 2024 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA 2024) [PDF]

    @article{puthumanaillam2023weathering,
      title={Weathering ongoing uncertainty: learning and planning in a 
      time-varying partially observable environment},
      author={Puthumanaillam, Gokul and Liu, Xiangyu 
      and Mehr, Negar and Ornik, Melkior},
      journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:2312.03263},
      year={2023},
      note={accepted at IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation 
      (ICRA) 2024}
    }

Assured Collision Avoidance for Learned Controllers: A Case Study of ACAS Xu. in 2024 AIAA SCITECH Forum. [PDF]

    @inproceedings{puthumanaillam2024assured,
      title={Assured Collision Avoidance for Learned Controllers: A Case Study 
      of ACAS Xu},
      author={Puthumanaillam, Gokul and Vora, Manav Ketan and Shafa, 
      Taha and Li, Yangge and Ornik, Melkior and Mitra, Sayan},
      booktitle={AIAA SCITECH 2024 Forum},
      pages={1168},
      year={2024}
    }

Online Learning and Planning in Time-Varying Environments: An Aircraft Case Study. in 2024 AIAA SCITECH Forum. [PDF]

    @inproceedings{puthumanaillam2024online,
      title={Online Learning and Planning in Time-Varying Environments: An Aircraft Case Study},
      author={Puthumanaillam, Gokul and Mamik, Yuvraj and Ornik, Melkior},
      booktitle={AIAA SCITECH 2024 Forum},
      pages={0109},
      year={2024}
    }

A dynamic area prioritization based adaptive multi-robot target search. in 2024 International Conference on Unmanned Aircraft Systems (ICUAS 2024). [PDF]

    @inproceedings{gokul2024dynamic,
      title={A Dynamic Area Approximation-Based Stochastic Multi-UAV Target Search with Noisy 
      Measurements},
      author={Gokul, P and Harikumar, K and Senthilnath, J},
      booktitle={2024 International Conference on Unmanned Aircraft Systems (ICUAS)},
      pages={718--723},
      year={2024},
      organization={IEEE}
    }

★ Best Paper Award at IEEE GRSS Texture based prototypical network for few-shot semantic segmentation of forest cover: generalizing for different geographical regions. in Neurocomputing. [PDF]

    @article{puthumanaillam2023texture,
      title={Texture based prototypical network for few-shot semantic segmentation of 
      forest cover: Generalizing for different geographical regions},
      author={Puthumanaillam, Gokul and Verma, Ujjwal},
      journal={Neurocomputing},
      volume={538},
      pages={126201},
      year={2023},
      publisher={Elsevier},
      note={Best Paper Award at IEEE GRSS}
    }

Improved semantic segmentation for identification of flooded regions in UAV aerial images: a transformer-based approach. in 2023 IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS 2023) [PDF]

    @inproceedings{verma2023improved,
      title={Improved Semantic Segmentation for Identification of Flooded Regions 
      in UAV Aerial Images: A Transformer-Based Approach},
      author={Verma, Ujjwal and Puthumanaillam, Gokul},
      booktitle={IGARSS 2023-2023 IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium},
      pages={4800--4803},
      year={2023},
      organization={IEEE}
    }

Pandora: an IOT based intrusion detection honeypot with real-time monitoring. in 2021 International Conference on Forensics, Analytics, Big Data, Security (FABS 2021).

    @inproceedings{ramakrishnan2021pandora,
      title={Pandora: An IOT based Intrusion Detection Honeypot with Real-time Monitoring},
      author={Ramakrishnan, Karthik and Gokul, P and Nigam, Rohan},
      booktitle={2021 International Conference on Forensics, Analytics, Big Data, Security (FABS)},
      volume={1},
      pages={1--7},
      year={2021},
      organization={IEEE}
    }

BlockMapping: A Blockchain based multi-robot exploration. in 2021 Blockchain Applications in Robotics and Automation (IROS 2021).

    @inproceedings{puthumanaillam2022blockmapping,
      author = {Puthumanaillam, Gokul and Paramjit, Singh and Harshwardhan, Kulkarani},
      title = {BlockMapping: A Blockchain based multi-robot exploration},
      booktitle = {Blockchain Applications in Robotics and Automation, IROS 2021},
      year = {2021}
    }

Theses

Zero-shot segmentation on the edge. Bachelors (Hons) Thesis. Advisor: Prof. Ujjwal Verma. 2022.
SOLO Design Report (IGVC 2019). Available at [PDF]. 2019.
MBZIRC 2023 White paper: Team Luna. Available at: [PDF]. 2019.
Zeoco: An insight into daily carbon footprint consumption. 2021. arXiv: 2102.06185

Patent Applications

"POMCP based MIC creation for engines". Patent Application No. 606950-US-2 (146674.582103). Patent application under review. 2022 with GE Aerospace.
"Estimation of environmental disturbance for trailering". Patent Application No. ENT-2023-023. Patent application under review. 2023 with Brunswick Corporation.

Open Source

I am passionate about open-source software. Reference implementations of all algorithms I designed at LEADCAT are publicly available. I have also contributed features and bug-fixes to projects like Gazebo, Webots, Ardupilot, and Arduino.

Released: Belief-Conditioned One-Step Diffusion (v1.0.0 released: 05/10/2025 - Find it here)
Released: BlueROV2 Gymnasium Environment (v2.0.0 released: 11/11/2024 - Find it here)
Released: Code for ComTraQ-MPC (IROS 2024) (v1.0.0 released: 08/19/2024 - Find it here)
Released: ROS2 drivers for u-blox ZED F9P GPS receivers (v2.0.2 released: 07/10/2023 - Find it here)
Upcoming: Vim plugin for ROS2 developers (Expected: Spring, 2026)
Upcoming: ROS2 based space robotics with time-varying environments (Expected: Spring, 2026)

Academic Service

Conferences: CVPR (2026), ICRA (2026, 2025, 2024), IROS (2025, 2024), L4DC (2026, 2025), ICLR (2026, 2025), CoRL (2025), CDC (2024), ITSC (2025), AIAA SciTech (2024), AICECS(Student chair; 2022)

Journals: RAL, Nature Communications, OJCSYS

Acknowledgments

It takes a village to raise a child.

My parents have made many sacrifices to support me. My sister has always inspired and encouraged me. My advisors gave me the right environment and guidance to grow. My friends are the ones who've believed in me at my lowest, and celebrated with me at my highest. If I have seen further, it is by standing on shoulders of these giants.

For who I am and what I have to offer, I owe it ALL to them.