Manav Gagvani

University Purdue University
Major Computer Engineering
Graduation May 2027

Projects

Autonomous Go-Kart
Robotics Computer Vision

Autonomous Go-Kart

Building an autonomous go-kart with Autonomous Motorsports Purdue. Created a vision stack which beat the previous autonomous laptime record.

$5000+ Raised 2 Minute Lap Time 3rd Place
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AI Hackathon iOS Development

slynk - Ads you can talk to

Built an iOS app that allows people to have conversations with ads, using Sync.so's animation API and LLMs at BoilerMake, winning Sync.so's prize.

Winning Project Built in 24 Hours
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Machine Learning Robotics

Self-Driving RC Car

Hacked an RC car with a Raspberry Pi, camera, and LiDAR. Used imitation learning with CNNs to teach it to navigate around my house.

$100 Budget Python Language TensorFlow Framework
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Particle-Based Belief Propagation
Research Robotics Optimization

Particle-Based Belief Propagation for Visual Tracking

Developed a novel algorithm for probabilistic multi-agent path planning, which I presented at the 2024 American Control Conference.

25x Speedup vs. baseline
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Interpretable Neural Networks for Autonomous Vehicles
Robotics Machine Learning Research

Interpretable Neural Networks for Autonomous Vehicles

Developed a method to improve the interpretability of autonomous driving systems, which I presented at the 2025 Purdue ICON student conference.

CARLA Dataset 51% Crash Rate Reduction
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My Skills

What I Do

I'm an engineer focused on building systems combining machine learning and robotics. My work spans from turning RC cars into mini self-driving ones to building videos that you can talk with using video diffusion models.

Junior @ Purdue University
President @ Autonomous Motorsports Purdue
Lead @ Machine Learning at Purdue

Programming Languages

Python C C++ Rust Java MATLAB

ML & Robotics

PyTorch TensorFlow ROS2 NumPy SciPy OpenCV

Software Engineering

Docker Anaconda uv Unix Git GitHub

Where I've Worked

Modeling & Simulation Intern

Sedaro
June 2025 — Present

Led design for an agentic LLM assistant for wargaming and analysis ($1.5M SBIR). Also ported astrodynamics and satellite control code from Python to Rust, achieving a 55x speedup.

Research Assistant

Purdue Digital Twin Lab
September 2024 — Present

Currently working on diffusion modeling for end-to-end control of autonomous vehicles. Previously presented my work on intepretable end-to-end models at the Purdue ICON student conference.

Research Intern

U.S. Naval Research Laboratory
June 2023 — August 2023

Researched probabilistic methods for collaborative control of robot swarms. Co-authored and presented "Line-of-Sight Visual Target Tracking via Particle-Based Belief Propagation" at the 2024 American Control Conference.

Engineering Intern

CheckVideo
June 2021 — August 2021

Designed and prototyped laser-cut and 3D-printed parts to alleviate a shortage of camera mounts, enabling $400,000 of inventory to be sold, and redesigned existing parts, reducing manufacturing costs by 80%.

Let's Talk