vkrovi@clemson.edu
(864) 283-7114
4 Research Drive
Greenville, SC 29607
Prof. Venkat N. Krovi is the Michelin SmartState Chair of Vehicle Automation in the School of Mechanical and Automotive Engineering at Clemson University. He received his Ph.D. degree in Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics from the University of Pennsylvania in 1998.
The underlying theme of his research activities has been to take advantage of the “power of the many” (both autonomous agents and humans) to extend the reach of human users in dull, dirty, and dangerous environments. The principal opportunities lie in building upon heterogeneous, loosely interconnected physical and information systems and architecting high-confidence and reconfigurable operational capabilities in the presence of uncertainty. The lifecycle treatment approach (design, modeling, analysis, control, implementation and verification) of novel robotic and mechatronic systems places emphasis on both the theoretical formulation and experimental validation. These efforts at analyzing and realizing the potential of distributed autonomy and human-robot synergy have unlocked new opportunities in wide-ranging applications in plant automation, consumer electronics, automobile, defense and healthcare/surgical simulation arenas.
His work has been funded by NSF, DARPA, and ARO, as well as numerous state and industrial grants and has received multiple awards, including the 2025 ASME Mechanisms and Robotics Award, the 2024 IEEE RAS Distinguished Service Award, the 2023 ASME Dedicated Service Award, National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award, several best poster, conference and journal paper awards. His work has been published in more than 200 journal/conference articles, book chapters, and patents.
He has taken significant leadership roles in robotics research and education within multiple professional societies. Within the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), leadership included roles in the Design Materials and Manufacturing (DMM) Segment Leadership Team (~25000 members) and as Chair of the Robotics Technology Group within Technical and Engineering Communities. Within the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), he has served on the ExCom of IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (~30000 members) and has previously served on the Conference Activities Board (CAB), Member Activities Board (MAB) and Industrial Activities Board (IAB). Currently, he serves as the Associate Vice President of the IEEE RAS Financial Activities Board and a member of the Steering Committee for the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation series.
He is an active executive organizing committee member for many ASME and IEEE conferences. Notably, he has served as General Chair of the 2014 ASME International Design Engineering Technical Conferences (IDETC14) and as Finance Chair of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (CASE10, ICRA12, IROS14 and ICRA19, ICRA22).
He currently serves as the Editor-in-Chief of the ASME Journal of Mechanisms and Robotics (2018-present) and on the Steering Committee, IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Vehicles. He has previously served as Founding Editor-in-Chief of the SAE International Journal of Connected and Automated Vehicles and on the Editorial Boards of IEEE Transactions on Robotics, ASME Dynamic Systems Magazine, ASME Journal of Mechanisms and Robotics, ASME Journal of Dynamic Systems, Measurement and Control, IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics, and the Springer Journal of Intelligent Service Robotics.