About
I build autonomy for legged, wheeled, and aerial robots that work where GPS and maps do not reach: underground mines, natural caves, and planetary analogs. The work is aimed at inspection, monitoring, search and rescue, and planetary exploration. The planners and mappers from my research have run in an Icelandic lava tube and in operating mines in northern Sweden, and the code is public on GitHub.
I am a postdoctoral researcher in Robotics and AI at Luleå University of Technology, where I defended my PhD on autonomous exploration and path planning in November 2025. I lead two work packages in the Horizon Europe project PERSEPHONE, teach in the R7010E Robotics course, and supervise Master's theses.
I came to robotics through aerospace engineering. My master's thesis was a coaxial quadrotor designed to fly on Mars, and I still work on planetary analogs: lava tubes are the closest thing on Earth to the caves on the Moon and Mars.
Path
2014–2018
B.Tech. in Aerospace Engineering. The final-year project was a UAV designed for the thin atmosphere and low gravity of Mars.
2018–2020
M.Sc. in Space Science and Technology, through the Erasmus Mundus SpaceMaster programme. Thesis on the design, modelling, and control of a Mars coaxial quadrotor.
2021–2025
PhD in autonomous exploration and path planning for drones and legged robots in GPS-denied environments. Defended November 2025.
Now
Postdoctoral researcher in Robotics and AI. Work-package lead in the Horizon Europe project PERSEPHONE.
Research
My papers are on exploration planning, traversability, and navigation for ground and aerial robots that work without GPS, often as a team. The complete list is on Google Scholar.
IEEE ICRA · 2024
Scalable and traversability-aware graph-based exploration planner
A two-layered graph framework for large-scale exploration that reuses local sub-graphs and adapts to dynamic scene changes, updating a global navigation graph in real time to plan around blocked paths.
IEEE ICRA · 2025
A hierarchical graph-based terrain-aware autonomous navigation approach for complementary multimodal ground-aerial exploration
A hierarchical graph-based framework for joint ground-aerial exploration using semantic traversability and a shared confidence metric, letting ground robots delegate unreachable regions to aerial counterparts in real subterranean missions.
IEEE T-RO · 2024
A tree-based next-best-trajectory method for 3-D UAV exploration
ERRT is a fully integrated, ROS-based planner that combines local exploration, safe path planning, and actuation into a real-time sampling framework. Validated in simulation and in real subterranean field trials.
IEEE Aerospace Conference · 2022
Design and model predictive control
A coaxial quadrotor for Martian caves and lava tubes, terrain that wheeled rovers cannot cross. The paper models the vehicle and tracks trajectories with a model predictive controller, compared against a PID scheme like the one on the Ingenuity helicopter.
2025
IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS)
2024
Expert Systems with Applications
2024
IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA)
2024
Robotics and Autonomous Systems
2024
IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS)
2023
Advances in Space Research
2023
2023
2023
Journal of Intelligent & Robotic Systems
2023
AIAA Aviation Forum
2023
AIAA Aviation Forum
2023
International Conference on Electrical, Computer, Communications and Mechatronics Engineering (ICECCME)
2022
AIAA SciTech Forum
2022
Mediterranean Conference on Control and Automation (MED)
2021
M.Sc. thesis, Luleå University of Technology
2020
IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS)
Field
Iron-ore mine, Northern Sweden
Autonomous mapping and inspection of rockfall zones after a roof collapse in an operating iron-ore mine. The survey of the affected area was produced before any person entered it.
Vertical mine shaft
Full autonomy in vertical shaft exploration with high-fidelity 3D reconstruction in real underground conditions.
Underground mines
Autonomous post-blast gas-measurement runs in underground mines. Crews re-enter when the readings at the face show the air is clear.
Nordic mines, potash operations
Years of underground exploration and waypoint-navigation trials with Nordic mining companies, a mining-equipment manufacturer, and a European potash operator across EU- and industry-funded projects.
Horizon Europe and Horizon 2020 projects that put drones and ground robots into operating mines, with industry partners including LKAB and Epiroc.
Horizon Europe
2023 to present
Autonomous exploration of abandoned mines. I lead Work Packages 4 and 5, which deploy several robotic mining machines for collaborative mapping, ore detection, drill path planning, and task scheduling.
Horizon 2020
2020 to 2024
Autonomous robotized mine-shaft inspection by drone. The team demonstrated full autonomy in vertical shaft exploration and high-fidelity 3D reconstruction in real underground conditions.
Horizon 2020
2020 to 2023
I led the university's work in Work Packages 4 and 6: autonomous exploration and mapping with drones for inspection and first response in underground mines.
Software
Co-author
C++
ERRT, the T-RO 2024 planner. A ROS-based, real-time sampling framework that fuses local exploration, safe path planning, and actuation. Field-validated underground.
Author
C++
2.5D traversability-confidence mapping: elevation, slope, and a per-cell confidence metric for reactive ground navigation.
Author
C++
STAGE, the ICRA 2024 exploration planner. A two-layered, traversability-aware graph framework for large-scale exploration.
Author
C++
Communication bridge for PX4-based aerial platforms, wiring flight control into the ROS autonomy stack.
Author
MATLAB
Design, modelling, and model-predictive control of a coaxial quadrotor for the Martian environment.
Author
C++
Adaptive exploration experiments building on the STAGE graph planner.