Pratham VK

“Robotics engineer who helped bootstrap Meta’s humanoid robotics effort, building simulation training and deployment infrastructure for vision-language-action (VLA) models. Evaluated multiple physics backends (Bullet, MuJoCo, Isaac, internal) to minimize sim-to-real gap and addressed control-loop frequency mismatches via sequence optimization/MPC-like approaches and trajectory-output modifications. Published research that contributed a new addition to ROS 2 and has built ROS2 node stacks spanning control, perception, teleop, tactile sensing, and imaging.”

“Robotics software engineer who built the behavior-tree orchestrator for the Vulcan Stow robotic system, migrating from a state machine to significantly improve testability. Experienced with ROS 1 and Baidu Apollo workflows (rosbag, LiDAR/image extraction) from self-driving simulation work at LG Silicon Valley Lab, and currently focused on stable Docker/docker-compose-based deployments with disciplined QA and hotfix processes.”

“Robotics software engineer from Stanley Black & Decker’s autonomous team who built and deployed a ROS2-based model predictive control system for a commercial autonomous lawn mower, integrating real-time localization, Nav2 planning, and custom control under real-time constraints. Has hands-on field debugging experience (Foxglove, TF timing, covariance/noise tuning) to resolve issues that only appeared outside simulation, plus containerized deployment and CI/CD experience.”