Kasun Weerakoon
Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering,
University of Maryland, College Park, MD
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About Me
About Me
I am currently the Robotics Autonomy Lead at AlphaZ Inc. I hold a Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Maryland, College Park, where I was a research assistant in the GAMMA Lab, advised by Prof. Dinesh Manocha. My doctoral research focused on autonomous navigation for robots in complex outdoor environments, combining robust perception, planning, and control strategies to enable intelligent, real-world deployment.
I received the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering Distinguished Dissertation Fellowship Award 2025, University of Maryland Graduate School's Outstanding Graduate Research Assistant Award for the Academic year 2022-23 and George Harhalakis Outstanding Systems Engineering Graduate Student Award for the year 2023-24.
My research interests include,
Robotics
Reinforcement Learning
Multi-model Perception
Autonomous Navigation
I have experience in developing autonomous navigation algorithms and porting them to real robot platforms such as Turtlebot 2, Clearpath Husky, Jackal, Boston Dynamics Spot, and Ghost Vision 60.
E-mail: kasunw@umd.edu
Education
Education
PhD in Electrical & Computer Engineering
PhD in Electrical & Computer Engineering
University of Maryland, College Park.
Aug. 2019 - May 2025
M.Sc. in Electrical Engineering
M.Sc. in Electrical Engineering
University of Maryland, College Park.
Aug. 2019 - May 2024
B.Sc.(Hons.) in Electrical & Electronic Engineering
B.Sc.(Hons.) in Electrical & Electronic Engineering
University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka.
Jan. 2014 - Sep. 2017
Recent Projects / Publications
Recent Projects / Publications
Vision Language Model (VLM) based Perception for Contextual and Scene aware Navigation
Deployable Navigation Policies Using Online and Offline Reinforcement Learning (RL)
Multi-modal Perception for Robot Navigation in Unstructured and Forested Environments
Proprioception and Pseudo Haptic Sensing for Legged Robot Navigation in Unstructured Terrains
1. Vision Language Model (VLM) based Perception for Contextual and Scene aware Navigation
1. Vision Language Model (VLM) based Perception for Contextual and Scene aware Navigation
K. Weerakoon, M. Elnoor, G. Seneviratne, V. Rajagopal, S. H. Arul , J. Liang, M. Jaffar and D. Manocha, "BehAV: Behavioral Rule Guided Autonomy Using VLMs for Robot Navigation in Outdoor Scenes", accepted in ICRA 2025.
K. Weerakoon, M. Elnoor, G. Seneviratne, V. Rajagopal, S. H. Arul , J. Liang, M. Jaffar and D. Manocha, "BehAV: Behavioral Rule Guided Autonomy Using VLMs for Robot Navigation in Outdoor Scenes", accepted in ICRA 2025.
2. Deployable Navigation Policies using Online and Offline Reinforcement Learning (RL)
2. Deployable Navigation Policies using Online and Offline Reinforcement Learning (RL)
K. Weerakoon, A. J. Sathyamoorthy, U. Patel, and D. Manocha, “TERP: Reliable planning in uneven outdoor environments using deep reinforcement learning,” International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2022, pp. 9447-9453.
K. Weerakoon, A. J. Sathyamoorthy, U. Patel, and D. Manocha, “TERP: Reliable planning in uneven outdoor environments using deep reinforcement learning,” International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2022, pp. 9447-9453.
K. Weerakoon, A. J. Sathyamoorthy, and D. Manocha, “Sim-to-Real Strategy for Spatially Aware Robot Navigation in Uneven Outdoor Environments,” in ICRA Workshop on Releasing Robots into the Wild: Simulations, Benchmarks, and Deployment, 2022.
K. Weerakoon, A. J. Sathyamoorthy, and D. Manocha, “Sim-to-Real Strategy for Spatially Aware Robot Navigation in Uneven Outdoor Environments,” in ICRA Workshop on Releasing Robots into the Wild: Simulations, Benchmarks, and Deployment, 2022.
Jing Liang, Kasun Weerakoon, Tianrui Guan, Nare Karapetyan, Dinesh Manocha, “AdaptiveON: Adaptive Outdoor Navigation Method For Stable and Reliable Actions,” in IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, vol. 8, no. 2, pp. 648-655, Feb. 2023.
Jing Liang, Kasun Weerakoon, Tianrui Guan, Nare Karapetyan, Dinesh Manocha, “AdaptiveON: Adaptive Outdoor Navigation Method For Stable and Reliable Actions,” in IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, vol. 8, no. 2, pp. 648-655, Feb. 2023.
3. Multi-modal Perception for Robot Navigation in Unstructured and Forested Environments
3. Multi-modal Perception for Robot Navigation in Unstructured and Forested Environments
A. J. Sathyamoorthy, K. Weerakoon, T. Guan, J. Liang, and D. Manocha, “TerraPN: Unstructured terrain navigation through Online Self-Supervised Learning,” accepted for IEEE/RSJ Intelligent Robots and Systems conference (IROS), 2022.
A. J. Sathyamoorthy, K. Weerakoon, T. Guan, J. Liang, and D. Manocha, “TerraPN: Unstructured terrain navigation through Online Self-Supervised Learning,” accepted for IEEE/RSJ Intelligent Robots and Systems conference (IROS), 2022.
Tianrui Guan, Divya Kothandaraman, Rohan Chandra, Adarsh Jagan Sathyamoorthy, Kasun Weerakoon, Dinesh Manocha, “GANav: Efficient Terrain Segmentation for Robot Navigation in Unstructured Outdoor Environments,” in IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, vol. 7, no. 3, pp. 8138-8145, July 2022.
Tianrui Guan, Divya Kothandaraman, Rohan Chandra, Adarsh Jagan Sathyamoorthy, Kasun Weerakoon, Dinesh Manocha, “GANav: Efficient Terrain Segmentation for Robot Navigation in Unstructured Outdoor Environments,” in IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, vol. 7, no. 3, pp. 8138-8145, July 2022.
4. Proprioception and Pseudo Haptic Sensing for Legged Robot Navigation in Unstructured Terrains
4. Proprioception and Pseudo Haptic Sensing for Legged Robot Navigation in Unstructured Terrains
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