Khuzema Habib
About Me
Masters in Robotics Engineering student at University of Maryland, College Park.
Education
Master of Engineering in Robotics, 2024-2026
University of Maryland, College Park
Bachelors of Technolgy in Mechanical Engineering, 2019-2023
Manipal Institute of Technology
Work Experience
Graduate Research Assistant
Robotics Algorithms and Autonomous Systems Lab - University of Maryland
August 2025 - Present
- Gathered 100+ expert demonstration data via teleoperation of a UR3e robotic arm and tested on lightweight imitation learning models using an affordance-guided framework
- Conducted flight trials to collect trajectory datasets for Crazyflie drone control systems, developing Contextual NeuroMHE Controllers to improve adaptability
- Working on Autonomous Indoor Navigation and Mobile Manipulation with Jetson Nano on Turtlebot2 Platform
- Developing Real-time CFD Based Estimation with FluidX3D for Contextual NeuroMHE Quadrotor Controller in Turbulent Environments
Grading Assistant - Control of Robotic Systems
Maryland Applied Graduate Engineering - ENPM 667
September 2025 - Present
- Assisted in grading assignments for Control of Robotic Systems, helping 35+ students understand control system design
- Covered PID and LQR controllers, and real-world applications in robotics for system modeling and optimization
Graduate Research Assistant
Smart Materials and Structures Lab - University of Maryland
February 2025 - August 2025
- Conducted advanced simulations using ANSYS to model and analyze the behavior of smart materials, including piezoelectric materials for energy harvesting
- Mathematical Modeling of Flow Environments by leveraging CFD with Ansys Fluent
- Acoustics and Vibration Analysis for Vibration Dampening solutions in Acoustic Black-Hole applications
Computational Fluid Dynamics Simulation Intern
Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay
2022
- Performed 2D and 3D CFD simulations for a rocket thruster, aiming to identify optimal fuel and oxidizer injector configurations for maximum atomization efficiency
- Gained hands-on experience with simulation tools and contributed to improving injector design for increased propulsion efficiency
Research Interests
Projects
Autonomous Mobile Manipulator
- Built and developed a fully autonomous robot capable of computer vision-based object localization
- Implemented sensor-fused navigation and servo-controlled manipulation for complete pick-and-place tasks
- Integrated multiple subsystems for end-to-end autonomous operation
Visual Servoing with MPC for Nonholonomic Robot Steering
- Designed MPC visual servoing controller for Turtlebot3 navigation using RealSense and Aruco markers
- Achieved smoother control and faster goal achievement compared to traditional PD controllers
- Demonstrated improved performance in nonholonomic robot navigation tasks
Contextual Neural Moving Horizon Estimation for Quadrotor Control
- Developed reinforcement learning-based adaptive controller for robust quadrotor trajectory tracking
- Achieved 20.3% trajectory error reduction on Crazyflie Drones across diverse environments
- Enhanced adaptability and reduced trajectory deviations in turbulent environments
AFFORD2ACT: Affordance-Guided Robotic Manipulation
- Developed affordance-guided keypoint selection framework for lightweight, real-time robotic manipulation
- Achieved 82% success rate on unseen objects with minimal training data
- Enabled generalizable manipulation using semantic 2D keypoints from text prompts and single images
Publications
In Review ICRA 2026