Director of Perception @ Voxel  ·  San Francisco

Abhishek
Venkataraman

Roboticist and software leader. Perception, autonomy, physical AI.

10+ years taking robots from prototype to real-world deployment: autonomous vehicles, personal robots, manipulators, and drones.

Abhishek with a mobile manipulator, perception overlay
10+
Years in robotics
5
Robot classes shipped
3,000
Cameras deployed in production
9
AV deployment sites
Now / Featured

Proxy Robotics

Full-stack, low-latency teleoperation for multi-robot fleets, built for physical AI.

Work

Building and shipping deep-tech, end to end

Perception, autonomy, and the teams and infrastructure that move robots from demo to deployment.

Voxel industrial-safety perception with forklift detection

Voxel

Director, Perception · 2024 — present

Leading perception for industrial-safety computer vision at scale.

15-person org 2,500 cameras / 125 sites VLM-based perception 80% fewer false positives labeling: 6 mo → 1 wk
Nuro autonomous vehicle behavior evaluation scene

Nuro

Technical Lead & Manager, Behavior Evaluation · 2022 — 2024

Built the evaluation backbone for autonomous-driving behavior.

used by 40+ engineers team of 10 +36% stack performance +50% throughput
May Mobility self-driving shuttle in deployment

May Mobility

Senior Robotics Engineer, Perception · 2018 — 2022

Perception and autonomy for self-driving shuttles, deployed in the field.

9 sites · US + Japan faster behavior prediction multi-platform (Lexus, Sienna) VRU interaction

Ather Energy

Senior Engineer, Team Manager · 2015 — 2016

Electrical architecture for India's first smart electric scooter.

team of 6 Ather S340 6 subsystems DFMEA

Schlumberger

Senior Engineer · 2012 — 2015

Offshore wireline operations on oil rigs, hardware in the harshest field conditions.

80+ logging jobs crew of 8 offshore rigs
Education
M.S. Robotics, UMich B.Tech, IIT Madras Corso Lab · GSI for Math for Robotics & Advanced Computer Vision
Robots & Platforms

Hands-on across the fleet

Hardware I've built on, calibrated, deployed, or teleoperated, directly.

Manipulators
Kinova G3
Kinova G3
Franka Emika
Franka Emika
AgileX Piper
AgileX Piper
Lite6
Lite6
Mobile & personal robots
Hello Robot Stretch
Hello Robot Stretch
Fetch
Fetch
Toyota HSR
Toyota HSR
Drone
Drones
Autonomous vehicles
Polaris GEM
Polaris GEM
Lexus AV
Lexus
Toyota Sienna
Toyota Sienna
Ground robot
AMRs
Interfaces & sensors
Meta Quest 3
Meta Quest 3
Force Dynamics Omega
FD Omega
Stereo camera
Stereo + depth
Lidar
Lidar + radar
Capabilities

What I work with

Perception & CV / 01

SegmentationTrackingSensor fusion VLMsVideoMAESAMYOLOResNet

Autonomy / 02

Behavior evaluationSimulation Multi-policy planningScenario management

ML / Frameworks / 03

PyTorchTensorFlowOpenCVROS

Infrastructure / 04

AWSDatabricksBigQueryKubernetes RayClearMLGrafanaDocker

Languages / 05

C++PythonGoSQLTypeScript

Hardware / 06

Electrical + mechanical designCamerasLidar RadarGPS / IMUCalibration