About

Swapneel Naphade is an INCOSE Certified Associate Systems Engineering Professional (ASEP) with a specialization in Robotics and Control Systems. He is currently working on the behavior and motion planning of indoor industrial aerial robots at Corvus Robotics. Swapneel is an experienced technical leader who has led successful teams in international technical competitions such as IROS ADR and FSAE. Swapneel is highly skilled in developing estimation (sensor fusion) and control software on embedded platforms using C, C++, Python, and Embedded C. He has hands-on experience with PID, LQR, LQG, Kalman Filters, Extended Kalman Filters, and Model Predictive Control Systems. He is familiar with high-level C++ and Python robotics frameworks and libraries such as ROS, OpenCV, PCL, Eigen, Boost, and NLopt. Swapneel is knowledgeable in model-based systems engineering practices such as Requirements Management (RM), System Architecture Development (OOSEM, SysML), and Systems Integration, Verification, and Validation (IV&V), with supporting processes like Quality Management (QM), Cost Estimation, and Tradeoff Analysis. He is extremely inclined towards developing products that require multidisciplinary effort. Swapneel has worked as a Graduate Research Assistant at the University of Maryland, where he led the Autonomous Drone Racing team: TurboTerps, which won the second place at the IROS ADR 2019 competition. His team's goal was to develop the world's fastest, fully autonomous drone that could beat a human pilot in a drone race. The developed system consists of a light-weight visual-inertial-odometry (VIO) system specifically designed for autonomous drone racing and a Non-Linear Model Predictive Controller (NMPC) that enables optimally controlled aggressive maneuvers for trajectory tracking. The software is built on ROS framework with C++ libraries like roscpp, boost, openCV, and nlopt. The system will have a wide variety of applications from high-speed drone deliveries to entertainment. Swapneel has also worked as a Technical Lead at Nitk Racing, where he led a team of 25 undergraduate engineers for the design, manufacturing, and testing of the 2017 Formula Student car, NR17. Swapneel holds a Master of Science degree in Systems Engineering with a specialization in Control Systems from the University of Maryland and a Bachelor of Technology degree in Mechanical Engineering from the National Institute of Technology Karnataka. He has