# Sonali Deshpande

> Robotics Engineer, Relay Robotics | ex Mayfield, GM, CMU

Location: Santa Clara, California, United States
Profile: https://flows.cv/sonalideshpande

I'm a robotics expert specializing in autonomous navigation and applied machine learning for perception and state estimation of embodied AI. I have a proven record of shipping award-winning robotic products, leading the technical direction for perception and navigation stacks for large-scale fleets (>100 robots, >1.5M deployments), and taking complex systems from concept to production.

## Work Experience
### Staff Robotics Software Engineer @ Relay Robotics
Jan 2024 – Present
Set technical direction for the navigation stack of a 100+ fleet of hotel and hospital
delivery robots with over 1.5 million deliveries

Implemented deep learning based visual place recognition for mislocalization detection

Implemented object detection for improved navigation in dynamic environments

Developed a novel framework for evaluating the autonomous navigation level of an indoor robot, inspired by the levels of automated driving framework for self-driving cars, published in The Robot Report

### Senior Navigation Engineer @ Relay Robotics
Jan 2022 – Jan 2024
Helped launch Relay2, an improved delivery robot for hospitals that is currently operating in leading US hospital networks. Enhanced Relay2’s navigation safety and reliability for hospitals by evaluating and integrating new sensors and improving obstacle avoidance behaviors

Core part of a small team that developed Relay+, the next generation of Relay robot that has pioneered the capability of riding elevators autonomously as a human would without the need for any additional infrastructure or communication with the elevator. The product was named in the 𝐑𝐁𝐑𝟱𝟬 𝐦𝐨𝐬𝐭 𝐢𝐧𝐧𝐨𝐯𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐝𝐮𝐜𝐭𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟮

### Robotics Engineer @ Relay Robotics
Jan 2018 – Jan 2022 | San Francisco Bay Area
Improve and maintain navigation performance for 100+ fleet of Relay delivery robots and ensure safe and people-friendly navigation

### Robotics Software Engineer @ Mayfield Robotics
Jan 2017 – Jan 2018 | Redwood City
Developed custom calibration software for Kuri's novel depth sensor and worked on other navigation improvements (https://www.heykuri.com/)

### Perception Systems Engineer @ General Motors
Jan 2016 – Jan 2017
Localization lead for the autonomous driving team

### Robotics Engineer @ Discovery Robotics
Jan 2015 – Jan 2015
Autonomous navigation of a robotic vacuum cleaner prototype. Specifically -
•	Developed, implemented and tested a navigation algorithm for along-the-wall cleaning
•	Generated motion primitives and tested various path planning algorithms for point A to point B   autonomous navigation
•	Performed final integration, tuning, and testing of autonomous navigation capability
•	Implemented and tested the base PID controller
•	Developed a model of the robot in Gazebo to simulate all the above behaviours
Development platform: ROS, Arduino, Gazebo


## Education
### Master's Degree in Robotic Systems Development
Carnegie Mellon University

### Bachelor's Degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering
Vellore Institute of Technology


## Contact & Social
- LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/deshpandesonali

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Source: https://flows.cv/sonalideshpande
JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/sonalideshpande/resume.json
Last updated: 2026-04-01