• Professor, Mechanical Engineering
  • Gulf Oil/Thomas A. Dietz Professor
  • Affiliated Faculty, Ocean Engineering
Swaroop Darbha

Educational Background

  • Ph.D., Mechanical Engineering, University of California at Berkeley — 1994
  • M.S., Mechanical Engineering, University of California at Berkeley — 1992
  • B.Tech., Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Madras — 1989

Research Interests

    • Decision and Control Algorithms for Enabling Autonomy
    • Vehicle Dynamics & Control
    • Intelligent Transportation Systems
    • Task Allocation and Decision Making for UAVs
    • Applied Combinatorial Optimization & Control
    • Robotics

Industry Experience

    • Visiting Post-Doctoral Researcher, California PATH, Institute for Transportation Studies, UC Berkeley, 1994-1996: Vehicle Modeling and Control, Vehicle Platooning experiments for highway and stop & go scenarios, Evaluating Automated Highway System Concepts for safety and feasibility.
    • Summer Faculty Researcher at Volpe Transportation Center, 1997: Influence of Adaptive Cruise Control Systems on Traffic Flow Stability, Traffic flow modeling.
    • Faculty Researcher at Air Force Research Laboratory, Summers of 2000-2001, 2005, 2008-2011 and the calendar year 2006: UAV Motion Planning, Task Allocation for heterogeneous collection of UAVs, Sequential Decision Making for Mixed Initiative, Stochastic Control for Perimeter Patrol, Intruder Detection and Tracking.
    • Summer Researcher at United Technology Research Center: Scheduling Algorithms & Load Estimation for Chillers.

Awards & Honors

  • 2018 Fellow, IEEE - for contributions to Intelligent Transportation Systems and Unmanned Vehicles
  • 2014 Best Paper Award (Joint with Gupta Manyam, Siva Rathinam and David Casbeer), IEEE International Conference on Unmanned Aircraft Systems
  • 2010 Fellow, ASME for contributions to Intelligent Transportation Systems and Unmanned Vehicles.
  • 2009 The Association of Former Students' Distinguished Achievement Award (College Level)
  • 2009 Tenneco Award for Meritorious Teaching of Engineering
  • 2009 Texas A&M University College of Engineering Faculty Fellow

Selected Publications

  • M. Liu, K. Chour, S. Rathinam and S. Darbha, ``Lateral Control of an Autonomous and Connected Vehicle with Limited Preview Information, IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Vehicles, doi:10.1109/TIV.2020.3033773.
  • S. K. K. Hari, S. Rathinam, S. Darbha, K. Kalyanam, S. G. Manyam and D. Casbeer, ``Optimal UAV Route Planning for Persistent Monitoring Missions,’’ IEEE Transactions on Robotics, vol. 37, no. 2, pp. 550-566, April 2021, doi: 10.1109/TRO.2020.3032171.
  • S. Darbha, S. Konduri and P. R. Pagilla, ``Benefits of V2V Communication for Autonomous and Connected Vehicles,’’ IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems, vol. 20, no. 5, pp. 1954-1963, May 2019, doi: 10.1109/TITS.2018.2859765.
  • K. Kalyanam, M. Pachter, M. Patzek, C. Rothwell and S. Darbha, ``Optimal Human–Machine Teaming for a Sequential Inspection Operation,’’ IEEE Transactions on Human-Machine Systems, vol. 46, no. 4, pp. 557-568, Aug. 2016, doi: 10.1109/THMS.2016.2519603.
  • M. Park, K. Kalyanam, S. Darbha, P. P. Khargonekar, M. Pachter and P. R. Chandler, ``Performance Guarantee of an Approximate Dynamic Programming Policy for Robotic Surveillance,’’ IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering, vol. 13, no. 2, pp. 564-578, April 2016, doi: 10.1109/TASE.2014.2366295.