Manthan Patel
PhD Student · ETH Zurich · Robotic Systems Lab
Foundation Models for Robot Perception & Navigation
About
About Me
I am a Ph.D. student in robotics at the Robotic Systems Lab, ETH Zurich supervised by Prof. Marco Hutter and Dr. Cesar Cadena. My research focuses on Foundation Models for Perception and Navigation for legged robots in the wild. I am currently interested in spatio-temporal memory and reasoning for long range navigation in the open world.
Previously, I obtained my MSc. in Robotics, Systems and Control at ETH Zurich and did my master's thesis at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory on traversability mapping for off-road environments. I have experience with diverse robotic platforms including legged robots, wheeled ground robots, and flying robots.
I am always open to collaborations and discussions. Feel free to reach out to me!
Research
Featured Research
WayTrace: A Map-to-Language-to-Trace Hierarchy for Embodied Urban Navigation
A hierarchical system that turns web-map walking directions into robot motion through language. A VLM issues atomic commands, an onboard trace predictor draws the path, and an RL policy follows it, completing missions of up to 1.37 km through a busy city centre.
Background
Education
Oct 2024 — Present
Ph.D. in Robotics — ETH Zurich
Foundation Models for Perception and Navigation in the Wild
Supervisors: Prof. Marco Hutter, Dr. Cesar Cadena
Sep 2021 — Apr 2024
M.Sc. in Robotics, Systems and Control — ETH Zurich
Grade: 5.9/6.0 · Thesis Grade: 6.0/6.0
Thesis: Learning Traversability Maps for Autonomous Off-road Navigation (at NASA JPL)
Sep 2017 — Apr 2021
B.Tech. in Mechanical Engineering — IIT Kharagpur
Academic Rank: 1/140 · Micro-specialisation in Entrepreneurship and Innovation
Thesis: Collaborative Mapping of Archaeological Sites using Multiple UAVs (at MPI-IS)
Experience
Internships & Research
Jun 2024 — Oct 2024
Research Engineer — ETH Zurich, Robotic Systems Lab
Long-range autonomous hiking with ANYmal
Sep 2023 — Apr 2024
Visiting Researcher — NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, CA, USA
Master's Thesis · RoadRunner M&M framework · Real-world field deployments
Sep 2022 — Feb 2023
Computer Vision Intern — Sony Research & Development Center, Zurich
Spatio-temporal CNNs for Event-based Vision · High-speed spin estimation
May 2020 — Apr 2021
Visiting Researcher — MPI for Intelligent Systems, Germany
Bachelor's Thesis · Collaborative SLAM for UAV archaeological mapping
Teaching
Teaching & Service
2024 — Present
Student Supervision — ETH Zurich
8× Master's Thesis · 3× Semester Thesis · 3× PLR Projects
2024 — Present
Reviewer — Conferences & Journals
ICRA · IROS · RA-L · CoRL · CVPR
Mar — Jul 2023
Teaching Assistant — ETH Robotics Summer School
Annual Robotics Summer School organized by RobotX
Recognition
Awards & Scholarships
2026
CVPR 2026 Top 5% Reviewer
Recognized among the top 5% of reviewers at the IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
2023 — 2024
JPL Visiting Student Research Fellowship
NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA
2021 — 2023
ETH D-MAVT Scholarship
Full merit-based scholarship — awarded to less than 2.5% of all D-MAVT Masters students
2021
Dr. B C Roy Memorial Gold Medal
Best all-rounder among all graduating 1400 B.Tech students at IIT Kharagpur
2021
Institute Silver Medal (Academic Rank 1)
Highest cumulative grade in Mechanical Engineering at IIT Kharagpur
2021
TKT Srikrishnan Endowment Prize
Best Bachelor's Thesis, Department of Mechanical Engineering, IIT Kharagpur
2020
DAAD WISE Scholarship
Research internship scholarship at Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems
2018 — 2020
Inter-IIT Tech Meet (7.0, 8.0, 9.0)
Three-time participant — Winner (2020), First Runner Up (2019), Second Runner Up (2018)
2019
27th IGVC — 2nd Place AutoNav Challenge
Among 40+ international teams at Oakland University, Michigan, USA
2020
OP Jindal Engineering and Management Scholarship
Awarded to 100 students across India for academic and leadership excellence