Anushri Dixit

Assistant Professor in MAE Department

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I am an Assistant Professor at the University of California, Los Angeles in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. Prior to this, I was a Postdoctoral Researcher at Princeton University in the Intelligent Robot Motion group. I earned my Ph.D. in Control and Dynamical Systems from California Institute of Technology in 2023 and my B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology in 2017.

My research focuses on motion planning and control of robots in unstructured environments while accounting for uncertainty in a principled manner.  I have received the Outstanding Student Paper Award at the Conference on Decision and Control, Best Student Paper Award at the Conference of Robot Learning (as a co-author), and was selected as a Rising Star in Data Science by The University of Chicago.

Publications

2026

  1. /paper_web/cpnav/CPnav.png
    CPNAV: Calibrated Vision-Language Navigation for Object-Goal Search in Unseen Environments
    Qizhao Chen, Yuanhong Zeng, Shoh Nishino, and 1 more author
    In submission to 2026 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2026
    PDF Code Website
  2. risk2025zeng.jpg
    Risk-Aware Reinforcement Learning with Bandit-Based Adaptation for Quadrupedal Locomotion
    Yuanhong Zeng and Anushri Dixit
    2026 IEEE International Conference in Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2026
    PDF Code Website

2025

  1. allen2024move.png
    Who Moved My Distribution? Conformal Prediction for Interactive Multi-Agent Systems
    Allen Emmanuel Binny and Anushri Dixit
    arXiv preprint arXiv:2511.11567, 2025
    PDF Code
  2. reliable2025badithela.png
    Reliable and scalable robot policy evaluation with imperfect simulators
    Apurva Badithela, David Snyder, Lihan Zha, and 4 more authors
    arXiv preprint arXiv:2510.04354, 2025
    PDF Website
  3. distributionally2025cherukuri.png
    Distributionally Robust and Risk-Averse Model Predictive Control for Motion Planning and Control: Reformulations and Computational Issues
    Ashish Cherukuri, Anushri Dixit, and Astghik Hakobyan
    In Nonlinear and Constrained Control: Applications, Synergies, Challenges and Opportunities, 2025
  4. education2025akella.png
    Risk-aware robotics: Tail risk measures in planning, control, and verification [focus on education]
    Prithvi Akella, Anushri Dixit, Mohamadreza Ahmadi, and 5 more authors
    IEEE Control Systems, 2025

2024

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    Sample-based bounds for coherent risk measures: Applications to policy synthesis and verification
    Prithvi Akella, Anushri Dixit, Mohamadreza Ahmadi, and 2 more authors
    Artificial Intelligence, 2024
  2. explore2024ren.png
    Explore until confident: Efficient exploration for embodied question answering
    Allen Z Ren, Jaden Clark, Anushri Dixit, and 3 more authors
    In Robotics: Science and Systems, 2024
  3. perceive2024ren.png
    Perceive with confidence: Statistical safety assurances for navigation with learning-based perception
    Zhiting Mei, Anushri Dixit, Meghan Booker, and 5 more authors
    The International Journal of Robotics Research, 2024
  4. step2024dixit.jpg
    Step: Stochastic traversability evaluation and planning for risk-aware navigation; results from the darpa subterranean challenge
    Anushri Dixit, David D Fan, Kyohei Otsu, and 3 more authors
    Field Robotics, 2024

2023

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    Risk-averse receding horizon motion planning for obstacle avoidance using coherent risk measures
    Anushri Dixit, Mohamadreza Ahmadi, and Joel W Burdick
    Artificial Intelligence, 2023
  2. robot2023help.png
    Robots that ask for help: Uncertainty alignment for large language model planners
    Allen Z Ren, Anushri Dixit, Alexandra Bodrova, and 8 more authors
    In Conference on Robot Learning (CoRL), 2023
  3. adaptive2023dixit.png
    Adaptive conformal prediction for motion planning among dynamic agents
    Anushri Dixit, Lars Lindemann, Skylar X Wei, and 3 more authors
    In Learning for Dynamics and Control Conference, 2023

2022

  1. Prepare: Predictive proprioception for agile failure event detection in robotic exploration of extreme terrains
    Sharmita Dey, David Fan, Robin Schmid, and 5 more authors
    In 2022 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2022
  2. Distributionally robust model predictive control with total variation distance
    Anushri Dixit, Mohamadreza Ahmadi, and Joel W Burdick
    IEEE Control Systems Letters, 2022
  3. Moving obstacle avoidance: A data-driven risk-aware approach
    Skylar X Wei, Anushri Dixit, Shashank Tomar, and 1 more author
    IEEE Control Systems Letters, 2022

2021

  1. Risk-averse stochastic shortest path planning
    Mohamadreza Ahmadi, Anushri Dixit, Joel W Burdick, and 1 more author
    In 2021 60th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC), 2021
  2. Risk-sensitive motion planning using entropic value-at-risk
    Anushri Dixit, Mohamadreza Ahmadi, and Joel W Burdick
    In 2021 European control conference (ECC), 2021

2020

  1. The Kinematics of Tracked Vehicles via the Power Dissipation Method
    Anushri Dixit and Joel Burdick
    2020