About Me
Hi there! I am Raunaq and I am a postdoctoral researcher with Lerrel Pinto in the CILVR Lab at NYU Courant. I received my PhD from the Robotics Institute at CMU School of Computer Science, where I was advised by Abhinav Gupta and Carmel Majidi. Over the past two years, I also worked as a Visiting Researcher at Meta AI.

Before I started my PhD, I got a master's degree in Robotics working at the Biorobotics Lab at CMU under the guidance of Howie Choset and Matthew Travers, working on legged and modular robots.

A lifetime ago, I spent 4 years as an undergrad at the IIT Bombay dabbling in debate, robotics and a ton of dynamics classes.

Connect with me over email at raunaqbhirangi [at] nyu [dot] edu!

Research
Robotics is the most interdisciplinary of fields, and I believe that bringing robots into the unstructured, everyday world of homes and offices requires a comprehensive understanding of every aspect of robotics. I think of myself as a full-stack roboticist, and I'm currently focused on ReSkin, a soft magnetic skin capable of large area tactile sensing. My work encompasses sensor design and development, ML models that generalize across sensors, and integrating vision and tactile feedback for precise, closed-loop robot interaction.
Vani H. Sundaram, Raunaq Bhirangi, Mark Rentschler, Abhinav Gupta and Tess Hellebrekers
RoboSoft 2023
Master's thesis
icra2020
aaai2020

Modular robot design synthesis with deep reinforcement learning

Julian Whitman, Raunaq Bhirangi, Matthew Travers, Howie Choset
AAAI 2020
Teaching
During my time at CMU, I have been a Teaching Assistant for two classes, both virtually due to COVID-19. I have also been a Teaching Assistant during my time at IIT Bombay:
More About me
Outside of research, I enjoy hiking, reading, cooking and going to museums. I can have long discussions about history, culture, politics and philosophy with no regard for time, hunger, thirst or the other person's evident lack of interest.