I am a Senior Research Scientist at FieldAI, where I work on refining safe whole-body loco-manipulation policies for humanoid robots.

Research Overview: My research focuses on building autonomous systems that can safely operate in shared autonomy settings. I work on neurosymbolic approaches to decision-making under uncertainty, combining learned models with formal safety specifications and rule-based reasoning. My work spans behavior prediction, risk-aware planning, out-of-distribution robustness, and learning from failure data. Application domains include aerial autonomy, autonomous driving, and embodied AI.

During my PhD, I collaborated with NVIDIA Research (Dr. Marco Pavone) and Microsoft Research (Dr. Ashish Kapoor).

Education: I received my PhD in Robotics from the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University in May 2025, advised by Dr. Sebastian Scherer. I hold a Masters in Robotics from Carnegie Mellon University and a Masters and Bachelors in Aerospace Engineering from IIT Kanpur.

Beyond Research: I am passionate about aviation. I hold an FAA Private Pilot License and am the Founding President of The Flying Club at CMU.
Research visualization
Research in News
  • AI-Powered Vision System Helps Drones Navigate Safely, CMU News, July 2025 [Link]
  • Move over, autopilot: This AI can avoid other planes, Popular Science, Sept 2022 [Link]
  • CMU's AI pilot lands in the news, Practical AI – Episode #189, Sept 2022 [Link]
  • Drones bearing parcels deliver big carbon savings, Nature, Aug 2022 [Link]
  • Researchers Develop AI Pilot for Navigating Crowded Airspace, Aviation Today, Aug 2022 [Link]
  • AI Pilot Can Navigate Crowded Airspace, CMU School Of Computer Science, Aug 2022 [Link]
  • Flying Club To Promote Aviation at CMU, The Piper, June 2021 [Link]
  • The Flying Club Has Taken Off The Piper, October 2022 [Link]
  • CMU-Africa Students Explore Aviation Collaborations with CMU Pittsburgh Club, The Piper, November 2023 [Link]

Experience

  • FieldAI logo
    2025 - Present
    Remote / USA
    FieldAI
    Senior Research Scientist
    Safe whole-body loco-manipulation policies for humanoid robots
  • NVIDIA logo
    January 2024 - December 2024
    Santa Clara, CA - USA
    NVIDIA Research
    Research Intern
  • Microsoft logo
    Summer 2022
    Bellevue, WA - USA
    Microsoft Research
    Research Intern

Education

  • Carnegie Mellon University logo
    2020 - 2025
    PA - USA
    Carnegie Mellon University
    Robotics - Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
  • Carnegie Mellon University logo
    2018 - 2020
    PA - USA
    Carnegie Mellon University
    Robotics - Master of Science in Robotics (MSR)
  • IIT Kanpur logo
    2017 - 2018
    Kanpur - India
    Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur
    Department of Aerospace Engineering - Masters in Technology (MTech)
  • IIT Kanpur logo
    2013 - 2017
    Kanpur - India
    Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur
    Department of Aerospace Engineering - Bachelors in Technology (BTech)

Licenses

  • 2022
    Private Pilot License
    Part 61
    Federal Aviation Administration
  • 2019
    Remote Pilot License
    Part 107
    Federal Aviation Administration

Publications

For a full list, please visit Google Scholar.

    2025

  • GrndCtrl visualization
    GrndCtrl: Grounding World Models via Self-Supervised Reward Alignment

    He, Haoyang; Patrikar, Jay; Kim, Dong-Ki; Smith, Max; McGann, Daniel; Agha-mohammadi, Ali-akbar; Omidshafiei, Shayegan; Scherer, Sebastian

    Preprint (ArXiv) 2025

  • GLUESTICK visualization
    Don't Run with Scissors: Pruning Breaks VLA Models but They Can Be Recovered

    Jabbour, Jason; Kim, Dong-Ki; Smith, Max; Patrikar, Jay; Ghosal, Radhika; Wang, Youhui; Agha, Ali; Janapa Reddi, Vijay; Omidshafiei, Shayegan

    Preprint (ArXiv) 2025

  • Co-Me visualization
    Co-Me: Confidence-Guided Token Merging for Visual Geometric Transformers

    Chen, Yutian; Qiu, Yuheng; Li, Ruogu; Agha, Ali; Omidshafiei, Shayegan; Patrikar, Jay; Scherer, Sebastian

    Preprint (ArXiv) 2025

  • AutoODD visualization
    AutoODD: Agentic Audits via Bayesian Red Teaming in Black-Box Models

    Martin, Rebecca; Patrikar, Jay; Scherer, Sebastian

    Conference on Robot Learning [Workshop] (CoRL) 2025

  • Negative Data visualization
    The Case for Negative Data: From Crash Reports to Counterfactuals for Reasonable Driving

    Patrikar, Jay; Sharma, Apoorva; Veer, Sushant; Li, Boyi; Scherer, Sebastian; Pavone, Marco

    Conference on Robot Learning [Workshop] (CoRL) 2025

  • ViSafe visualization
    Demonstrating ViSafe: Vision-enabled Safety for High-speed Detect and Avoid

    Kapoor, Parv*; Higgins, Ian*; Keetha, Nikhil*; Patrikar, Jay*; Moon, Brady; Ye, Zelin; He, Yao; Cisneros, Ivan; Hu, Yaoyu; Liu, Changliu; Kang, Eunsuk; Scherer, Sebastian

    Robotics: Science and Systems (RSS) 2025

  • TartanAviation visualization
    TartanAviation: Image, Speech, and ADS-B Trajectory Datasets for Terminal Airspace Operations

    Patrikar, Jay; Dantas, Joao; Moon, Brady; Hamidi, Milad; Ghosh, Sourish; Keetha, Nikhil; Higgins, Ian; Chandak, Atharva; Yoneyama, Takashi; Scherer, Sebastian

    Scientific Data (Nature) 2025

    • 2024

  • AmeliaTF visualization
    AmeliaTF: A Large Model and Dataset for Airport Surface Movement Forecasting

    Patrikar, Jay*; Navarro, Ingrid*; Ortega, Pablo*; Wang, Haichuan; Ye, Zelin; Park, Jong Hoon; Oh, Jean; Scherer, Sebastian

    AIAA AVIATION FORUM AND ASCEND 2024 [Best Paper Award]

  • RuleFuser visualization
    RuleFuser: An Evidential Bayes Approach for Rule Injection in Imitation Learned Planners for Robustness under Distribution Shifts

    Patrikar, Jay; Veer, Sushant; Sharma, Apoorva; Pavone, Marco; Scherer, Sebastian

    International Symposium on Robotics Research (ISRR) 2024

  • Pegasus simulator: An isaac sim framework for multiple aerial vehicles simulation

    Jacinto, Marcelo; Pinto, João; Patrikar, Jay; Keller, John; Cunha, Rita; Scherer, Sebastian; Pascoal, António

    International Conference on Unmanned Aircraft Systems (ICUAS) 2024

  • SoRTS: Learned Tree Search for Long Horizon Social Robot Navigation

    Patrikar, Jay*; Navarro, Ingrid*; Dantas, Joao PA; Baijal, Rohan; Higgins, Ian; Scherer, Sebastian; Oh, Jean

    IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters 2024

    • 2023

  • Foundation models visualization
    Toward General-Purpose Robots via Foundation Models: A Survey and Meta-Analysis

    Hu, Yafei; Xie, Quanting; Jain, Vidhi; Francis, Jonathan; Patrikar, Jay; Keetha, Nikhil; Kim, Seungchan; Xie, Yaqi; Zhang, Tianyi; Zhao, Shibo; Chong, Yu Quan; Wang, Chen; Sycara, Katia; Johnson-Roberson, Matthew; Batra, Dhruv; Wang, Xiaolong; Scherer, Sebastian; Kira, Zsolt; Xia, Fei; Bisk, Yonatan

    Preprint (ArXiv) 2023

  • FoundLoc visualization
    FoundLoc: Vision-based Onboard Aerial Localization in the Wild

    He, Yao; Cisneros, Ivan; Keetha, Nikhil; Patrikar, Jay; Ye, Zelin; Higgins, Ian; Hu, Yaoyu; Kapoor, Parv; Scherer, Sebastian

    Preprint (ArXiv) 2023

  • Follow the rules: Online signal temporal logic tree search for guided imitation learning in stochastic domains

    Patrikar, Jay*; Aloor, Jasmine Jerry*; Kapoor, Parv; Oh, Jean; Scherer, Sebastian

    IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2023

  • AirTrack: Onboard deep learning framework for long-range aircraft detection and tracking

    Ghosh, Sourish; Patrikar, Jay; Moon, Brady; Hamidi, Milad Moghassem; Scherer, Sebastian

    2023 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2023

    • 2022

  • Challenges in Close-Proximity Safe and Seamless Operation of Manned and Unmanned Aircraft in Shared Airspace

    Patrikar, Jay; Dantas, Joao P. A.; Ghosh, Sourish; Kapoor, Parv; Higgins, Ian; Aloor, Jasmine J.; Navarro, Ingrid; Sun, Jimin; Stoler, Ben; Hamidi, Milad; Baijal, Rohan; Moon, Brady; Oh, Jean; Scherer, Sebastian

    International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) [Workshop] 2022

  • Advanced Air Mobility visualization
    Quantifying the Effect of Weather on Advanced Air Mobility Operations

    Sharma, Ashima; Patrikar, Jay; Moon, Brady; Scherer, Sebastian; Samaras, Constantine

    Findings 2022

  • Energy analysis visualization
    Drone flight data reveal energy and greenhouse gas emissions savings for very small package delivery

    Rodrigues, Thiago A.; Patrikar, Jay; Oliveira, Natalia L.; Matthews, H. Scott; Scherer, Sebastian; Samaras, Constantine

    Patterns 2022

  • Predicting like a pilot: Dataset and method to predict socially-aware aircraft trajectories in non-towered terminal airspace

    Patrikar, Jay; Moon, Brady; Oh, Jean; Scherer, Sebastian

    International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2022

    • 2021

  • Adaptive Safety Margin Estimation for Safe Real-Time Replanning under Time-Varying Disturbance

    Ho, Cherie; Patrikar, Jay; Bonatti, Rogerio; Scherer, Sebastian

    2021

  • Energy dataset visualization
    In-flight positional and energy use data set of a DJI Matrice 100 quadcopter for small package delivery

    Rodrigues, Thiago A.; Patrikar, Jay; Choudhry, Arnav; Feldgoise, Jacob; Arcot, Vaibhav; Gahlaut, Aradhana; Lau, Sophia; Moon, Brady; Wagner, Bastian; Matthews, H. Scott

    Scientific Data 2021

  • Cvar-based flight energy risk assessment for multirotor uavs using a deep energy model

    Choudhry, Arnav; Moon, Brady; Patrikar, Jay; Samaras, Constantine; Scherer, Sebastian

    IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2021

    • 2020

  • Wind and the city: Utilizing uav-based in-situ measurements for estimating urban wind fields

    Patrikar, Jay; Moon, Brady G.; Scherer, Sebastian

    IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) 2020

  • Wind visualization
    Real-time motion planning of curvature continuous trajectories for urban UAV operations in wind

    Patrikar, Jay; Dugar, Vishal; Arcot, Vaibhav; Scherer, Sebastian

    2020 International Conference on Unmanned Aircraft Systems (ICUAS) 2020

    • 2019

  • Sequential landing visualization
    Sequential Auto-Landing of Multiple UAVs using Control Constrained Path Following

    Patrikar, Jay; Makkapati, Venkata Ramana; Kothari, Mangal

    AIAA Scitech Forum 2019

  • Guidance law visualization
    Nested saturation based guidance law for unmanned aerial vehicles

    Patrikar, Jay; Makkapati, Venkata Ramana; Pattanaik, Anay; Parwana, Hardik; Kothari, Mangal

    Journal of Dynamic Systems, Measurement, and Control 2019

    • 2018

  • MARAAL: A low altitude long endurance solar powered UAV for surveillance and mapping applications

    Dwivedi, Vijay Shankar; Patrikar, Jay; Addamane, Amulya; Ghosh, A. K.

    2018 23rd International Conference on Methods & Models in Automation & Robotics (MMAR) 2018

  • CNN sensors visualization
    Convolutional neural network based sensors for mobile robot relocalization

    Sinha, Harsh; Patrikar, Jay; Dhekane, Eeshan Gunesh; Pandey, Gaurav; Kothari, Mangal

    2018 23rd International Conference on Methods & Models in Automation & Robotics (MMAR) 2018

  • A Novel Fully Quaternion based Nonlinear Attitude and Position Controller

    Parwana, Hardik; Patrikar, Jay S.; Kothari, Mangal

    2018 AIAA Guidance, Navigation, and Control Conference 2018

  • A low-cost tilt-augmented quadrotor helicopter: Modeling and control

    Bhargavapuri, Mahathi; Patrikar, Jay; Sahoo, Soumya Ranjan; Kothari, Mangal

    2018 international conference on unmanned aircraft systems (ICUAS) 2018

Theses

  • Carnegie Mellon University logo
    Rethinking the Safety Case for Risk-Aware Social Embodied Intelligence

    J. Patrikar, Doctor of Philosophy Thesis. Supervised by Sebastian Scherer

    Carnegie Mellon University, 2025

  • Carnegie Mellon University logo
    Wind-Field Estimation and Curvature Continuous Path Planning for Low Altitude Urban Aerial Mobility

    J. Patrikar, Master of Science Robotics Thesis. Supervised by Sebastian Scherer

    Carnegie Mellon University, 2020

  • IIT Kanpur logo
    A 3D Guidance Law for Path Following

    J. Patrikar, Master of Technology Thesis. Supervised by Dr Mangal Kothari

    Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, 2018