Hanumant Singh
Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering
Jointly Appointed, Mechanical and Industrial Engineering
Program Director, Master of Science in Robotics
Office
- 525 ISEC
- 617.373.7286
Related Links
Research Focus
Machine Learning for Fisheries, SLAM in the presence of Dynamic Moving Objects, Counter UAS methodologies , Manipulation Underwater, and Imaging in Visually Degraded Environments including underwater and in polar regions
About
Hanumant Singh is a Professor at Northeastern University. He received his Ph.D. from the MIT WHOI Joint Program in 1995 and then worked on the Staff at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution until 2016 when he joined Northeastern. His research interests are in the area of field robotics, with an emphasis on SLAM, imaging, and mapping, particularly in the marine, polar and aerial domains.
His group has designed and built the Seabed AUV and the Jetyak Autonomous Surface Vehicle, dozens of which are in use for scientific and academic research across the globe. He also has strong interests in small Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS). He has participated in 60 expeditions in all of the world’s oceans in support of Marine Geology, Marine Biology, Deep Water Archaeology, Chemical Oceanography, Polar Studies, and Coral Reef Ecology. In collaboration with his students his awards include the ICRA Best Student Paper Award, the Sung Fu Memorial Best IEEE Transactions on Robotics Paper Award and Best Paper Awards at the Oceans Conference and at AGU.
Education
- Ph.D. Massachusetts Institute of Technology/Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Joint Program, 1995
Professional Affiliations
- Senior Member, IEEE
- Member, American Geophysical Union
- Member, Eta Kappa Nu, National Honor Society for Electrical Engineering
- Member, Alpha Chi, National Honor Society
Research Overview
Machine Learning for Fisheries, SLAM in the presence of Dynamic Moving Objects, Counter UAS methodologies , Manipulation Underwater, and Imaging in Visually Degraded Environments including underwater and in polar regions

Field Robotics Lab
Our group of students, faculty, and collaborators work on diverse interests including photomosaicking, visual-based navigation, 3D image reconstruction, image segmentation and classification, and chemical sensors. We work with manned submersibles, remotely operated and tethered vehicles, and autonomous underwater vehicles on different aspects of these systems including docking, navigation, manipulation and software for autonomous operations.
Research Centers and Institutes
Department Research Areas
Selected Publications
- Strycker, Noah, Borowicz, Alex, Wethington, Michael, Forrest, Steven, Shah, Vikrant, Liu, Yang, Singh, Hanumant, Lynch, Heather J. (2021). Fifty-year change in penguin abundance on Elephant Island, South Shetland Islands, Antarctica: results of the 2019–20 census. Polar Biology, 44(1),45-56. 10.1007/S00300-020-02774-4
- Mei, M. Jeffrey, Maksym, Ted, Weissling, Blake, Singh, Hanumant (2019). Estimating early-winter Antarctic sea ice thickness from deformed ice morphology. The Cryosphere, 13(11),2915-2934. 10.5194/TC-13-2915-2019
- Mei, M. Jeffrey, Maksym, Ted, Singh, Hanumant (2019). Estimating Early-Winter Antarctic Sea Ice Thickness From Deformed Ice Morphology. The Cryosphere Discussions, ,1-33. 10.5194/TC-2019-140
- Wagner, Till J. W., Straneo, Fiamma, Richards, Clark G., Slater, Donald A., Stevens, Laura A., Das, Sarah B., Singh, Hanumant (2019). Large spatial variations in the flux balance along the front of a Greenland tidewater glacier. The Cryosphere, 13(3),911-925. 10.5194/TC-13-911-2019
- H. Singh, W. Freeman, et al., Camouflaging an Object from Many Viewpoints, Proceedings of the 2014 Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Conference, 1-8
- C. Murphy, J. Walls, T. Schneider, H. Singh, et al. CAPTURE: A Communications Architecture for Progressive Transmission via Underwater Relays with Eavesdropping, IEEE Journal of Oceanic Engineering, 39(1), 2014, 1-13
- K.E. Smith, H. Singh, et al., Discovery of a Recent, Natural Whale Fall on the Continental Slope Off Anvers Island, Western Antarctic Peninsula, Deep Sea Research Part I: Oceanographic Research Papers, 90, 2014, 76-80
- G. Williams, J. Wilkinson, T. Maksym, H. Singh, C. Kunz, et al., Mapping Ice Thickness and Extreme Deformation of Antarctic Sea Ice from an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle, Nature Geoscience, 8, 2014, 61-67
- M. Yi Cheung, J. Leighton, U. Mitra, H. Singh, F.S. Hover Performance of Bandit Methods in Acoustic Relay Positioning, Proceedings of the 2014 Automatic Control Conference, 2014, 4708-4714
- C. Kunz, H. Singh, Map Building Fusing Acoustic and Visual Information Using Autonomous Underwater Vehicles, Journal of Field Robotics, 30(5), 2013, 1556-4967
- H. Singh, K. Nakamura, M. Jakobssen, T. Shank, et al. Effusive and Explosive Volcanism on the Ultraslow- Spreading Gakkel Ridge, 85°E, Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems, 13(10), 2012

Sep 22, 2023
How can we make robot cars safer? Northeastern student examines emerging technology as part of co-op in Germany
Robotics graduate student Srinivas Peri, MS’24, is completing a six-month co-op at TWT Science & Innovation in Germany, where he is researching and developing autonomous vehicle solutions.

Sep 01, 2023
India’s landing on the dark side of the moon is cheered, now comes the hard part of space exploration
After India’s successful moon landing, ECE Professors Hanumant Singh and Taskin Padir are excited to see what the future holds for lunar exploration and what role robots will play.

Aug 11, 2023
Northeastern Engineer Hanumant Singh and his Collection of Sea-Diving Robots add New Depth to our Understanding of Climate Impacts
ECE Professor Hanumant Singh is using marine robotics like his groundbreaking SeaBED vehicle to capture data on polar sea ice and reshape our understanding of remote environments.

Apr 27, 2023
A Northeastern Professor is Using Aquatic Drones to Measure How Quickly Icebergs are Melting
ECE Professor Hanumant Singh is using his Jetyak to create detailed 3D maps of icebergs in Greenland’s Sermilik Fjord with the intent of giving climate scientists a clearer picture of how they are melting and impacting the oceans.

Jan 11, 2023
Measuring Global Ice Melt
ECE/MIE Professor Hanumant Singh and his jetyak are featured in the Inside Manned Systems article “Measuring Global Ice Melt“.

Sep 23, 2022
Singh Receives IEEEOES 2022 Lifetime Achievement Award
ECE/MIE Professor Hanuman Singh received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the IEEE Oceanic Engineering Society for his work on autonomous underwater vehicles.

Nov 23, 2021
Singh Selected as IEEE Fellow
ECE/MIE Professor Hanumant Singh has been elevated to an IEEE Fellow for his development of localization and mapping techniques and autonomous systems for marine and polar applications. IEEE Fellow is the highest grade of membership and is recognized by the technical community as a prestigious honor and an important career achievement.

Oct 22, 2021
Northeastern Team Advances to Finals of ANA Avatar XPRIZE
Team Northeastern is one of 15 teams selected as finalists in the ANA Avatar XPRIZE. Finalist teams will equally share a milestone prize purse of $2M and move on to Finals Testing in Fall 2022 for their chance to win part of the $8M Finals prize purse.

Sep 10, 2021
Creating a Human Avatar in Remote Locations
A group of Northeastern University students led by MIE Assistant Professor Peter Whitney, has made it to the semifinals of the global Avatar XPrize competition which aims to create an avatar system that can transport human presence to a remote location in real-time.

Jul 28, 2021
Advancing Remote Robotic Technology
MIE Assistant Professor Peter Whitney has been working to design lightweight nimble robotic arms that could be capable of remote surgery or other situations where safety might be a factor. Nimble robotic arms that perform delicate surgery may be one step closer to reality Main photo: Robotics researchers at Northeastern are advancing a technology to […]