Dr. Aniket Bera

Dr. Aniket Bera is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at Purdue University and Director of the IDEAS Lab (Intelligent Design for Exploration and Augmented Systems). His lab develops next-generation robotics and autonomous systems designed to operate safely, reliably, and adaptively in contested and high-stakes environments. A robotics-first group, IDEAS focuses on how embodied agents—robots, teams of robots, and mixed human–robot teams—plan, perceive, and act under uncertainty while maintaining trust and effectiveness in dynamic missions.

Dr. Bera’s research brings together geometric reasoning and modern machine learning to advance assured motion planning, scalable multi-robot coordination, and autonomy with formal safety guarantees. His team builds planners with explicit safety margins and recovery behavior, intent-aware navigation and shared autonomy for human–robot teaming, and contact-rich and mobile manipulation in cluttered and adversarial environments. His work also advances aerial–ground collaboration, where UAVs provide global situational awareness and communications while UGVs and humanoid systems perform ground-level manipulation, reconnaissance, and logistics.

A core pillar of his research is digital twins and simulation environments that support rapid testing, validation, and sim-to-real transfer of autonomous capabilities—critical for deployment in regulated or contested defense settings. His group also pioneers learning from demonstrations combined with foundation models (vision–language–action and trajectory policies), enabling robots to rapidly capture and transfer skills across platforms, tools, and form factors.

Dr. Bera works closely with federal defense partners, including the U.S. Army Research Laboratory (ARL) and U.S. Navy–aligned efforts, to transition fundamental advances into field-ready prototypes. These collaborations accelerate progress in assured autonomy, resilient multi-domain operations, human–robot collaboration, and trusted AI for defense missions. In addition, his group maintains partnerships with leading industry players, ensuring that innovations scale into deployable platforms, reproducible toolchains, and open datasets.

He serves as Senior Editor for IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L) in Planning & Simulation and has held leadership positions in major robotics and graphics/VR communities. His work has earned multiple Best Paper awards and finalist recognitions at venues including ICRA, IEEE VR, and ISMAR, and has been highlighted by CBS, WIRED, Forbes, Fast Company, and NPR. He has authored more than 80 publications (5,000+ citations), secured multiple patents, and his research is consistently supported by federal agencies and industry partners advancing national security and autonomy at scale.