Hesam Mojtahedi

Ph.D. Student · SDSU–UC San Diego

I am a Ph.D. student in the SDSU–UC San Diego Joint Doctoral Program, advised by Prof. Reza Akhavian and Prof. Nikolay Atanasov. I work on mobile and bimanual manipulation.

My long-term goal is robots that learn and adapt like modern learning systems while staying as reliable as classical robotics. Right now I'm exploring this from a few directions: world models and robot learning for manipulation, safe and efficient motion planning, and ways to give learned behavior performance guarantees that hold up as robots and tasks grow more complex.

Always happy to chat about robots and robotics. If you're around San Diego, feel free to reach out by email!

Ph.D., SDSU–UC San Diego, 2026–present
M.S. Intelligent Systems, Robotics & Control, UC San Diego, 2022–2026
B.S. Electrical & Computer Engineering (Control), minor in Computer Engineering, University of Tehran, 2017–2022

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News

Oct 2026FLASH-CBF-RRT is out! See the project page.
Aug 2026Started my Ph.D. in the SDSU–UCSD Joint Doctoral Program.
Mar 2026Completed my M.S. at UC San Diego.
Nov 2025New preprint on BIM-aware UAV–UGV navigation.
Sep 2025New preprint: GLIDE, aerial–ground search and rescue.
Dec 2023Paper presented at IEEE CDC 2023.

Publications

FLASH-CBF-RRT: Fast Lipschitz-Adaptive Safe Horizon CBF Steering for Certified Motion Planning

Mani Amani*, Hesam Mojtahedi*, Reza Akhavian, Nikolay Atanasov, Ki Myung Brian Lee

Under review, 2026 · project

BIM-Discrepancy-Driven Active Sensing for Risk-Aware UAV-UGV Navigation

Hesam Mojtahedi, Reza Akhavian

arXiv, 2025 · arXiv

GLIDE: A Coordinated Aerial-Ground Framework for Search and Rescue in Unknown Environments

Seth Farrell, Chenghao Li, Hong-Den Yu, Hesam Mojtahedi, Sicun Gao, Henrik I. Christensen

arXiv, 2025 · arXiv

A Spectral Bundle Method for Sparse Semidefinite Programs

Hesam Mojtahedi, Feng-Yi Liao, Yang Zheng

IEEE CDC, 2023 · paper

+ 1 paper under review. * equal contribution.

Earlier work

Synthetic DW-MR images with different b values using deep learning, Applied Magnetic Resonance, 2022
Ensemble Neural Representation Networks, arXiv, 2021
Detecting COVID-19 in chest images with deep transfer learning, Egyptian J. Radiology and Nuclear Medicine, 2021

Robot Integration

Clearpath Husky with two UR5e arms, grippers, LiDAR and a pan-tilt neck camera

Custom pan-tilt neck carrying a stereo camera — Custom pan-tilt neck

I built and integrated our lab's mobile bimanual manipulator: a Clearpath Husky A200 with two UR5e arms and Robotiq 2F-85 grippers.

Robot neck. A custom 3D-printed pan-tilt mount driven by Dynamixel servos, carrying a stereo head camera.
VR teleoperation. A Unity / Meta Quest interface. The operator sees the robot's live stereo view, the neck follows their head, and their hands drive both arms.
Sensing. Wrist-mounted RealSense cameras, a Velodyne 3D LiDAR, and an IMU.
Software. ROS 2 integration and a complete robot description (URDF), with simulation-ready models for MuJoCo and Isaac Sim.

Interested in learning more about the platform? Feel free to reach out.

Outside the Lab

When I'm not working with robots, you'll usually find me at the gym, cooking something new, or reading a book on personal growth.