About

Harshal Deshpande is a Robotics Engineer at Peppermint Robots, with a focus on designing autonomous service robots for industrial floor cleaning and material movement. He is responsible for leading the robotics software development and hardware integration efforts. Harshal graduated early from BITS Pilani with a degree in Electronics and Physics, where he explored his interests in robotics and embedded systems. In addition to his technical expertise, Harshal is a big advocate of open-source software and has a keen interest in Climate Tech. He enjoys reading fiction, listening to podcasts, watching movies and TV shows, and playing video games in his free time. He also likes cycling and trekking on weekends. Currently, Harshal works as an Undergraduate Researcher at the University of Nevada, Reno, where he is working on motion planning for simultaneous exploration and visual search of underground mines and caves. He has submitted a manuscript titled "Hypergame-based Adaptive Behavior Path Planning for Combined Exploration and Visual Search" to IEEE ICRA 2021, which was accepted at the conference. Previously, Harshal worked as a Robotics Team Lead at Peppermint, where he was responsible for setting up processes and cultural values in the robotics team and managing a team of 3+ full-time engineers and floating interns. He also worked as a Summer Intern at Smart i Access Control Solutions, where he developed an access controller using Bluetooth Low Energy and researched using BLE beacons for localization. Harshal's educational background includes a Bachelor of Engineering degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani. His technical skills include research, search, integration, and software engineering, with relevant experience of 2.43 years. More information about Harshal can be found on his website at harshaldeshpande.info.