Sushant VeerPhysical AI Safety Research

Physical AI · Autonomous systems · Safety · Robot learning

Sushant Veer

Senior Research Scientist
NVIDIA Autonomous Systems and Physical AI Research (ASPIRE) Group

I develop methods for evaluating and improving the safety and robustness of learning-based autonomous systems.

My research brings together generative world models, reasoning vision-language models (VLMs), statistical learning, and control, with applications in autonomous driving and robotics.

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Sushant Veer

Publications

Journal articles, conference papers, and work in progress. View Google Scholar

Preprints 08

  1. Coverage Aware Active Evaluation for Failure Discovery with Paired Systems

    A. Parashar, R. Luo, A. Sharma, S. Veer, E. Schmerling, C. Sobolewski, M. Yu, C. Fan, M. Pavone

    arXiv:2608.13719, August 2026.

  2. X4Val: Learning Neural Surrogates for Variance-Reduced Policy Evaluation

    R. Luo, M. Watson, A. Sharma, H. Yang, H. Qi, E. Schmerling, S. Veer, B. Ivanovic, M. Pavone

    arXiv:2606.05159, June 2026.

  3. StressDream: Steering Video World Models for Robust Policy Evaluation and Improvement

    J. Seo, S. Veer, R. Tian, W. Ding, A. Sharma, K. Leung, E. Schmerling, M. Pavone, A. Bajcsy

    arXiv:2606.00267, May 2026.

  4. The Case for Negative Data: From Crash Reports to Counterfactuals for Reasonable Driving

    J. Patrikar, A. Sharma, S. Veer, B. Li, S. Scherer, M. Pavone

    arXiv preprint, 2025.

  5. RealDrive: Retrieval-Augmented Driving with Diffusion Models

    W. Ding, S. Veer, Y. Chen, Y. Cao, C. Xiao, M. Pavone

    arXiv preprint, 2025.

  6. Surprise Potential as a Measure of Interactivity in Driving Scenarios

    W. Ding, S. Veer, K. Leung, Y. Cao, M. Pavone

    arXiv preprint, 2025.

  7. HT-LIP Model Based Robust Control of Quadrupedal Robot Locomotion under Unknown Vertical Ground Motion

    A. Iqbal, S. Veer, C. Niezrecki, Y. Gu

    arXiv preprint, 2024.

  8. Learning Provably Robust Motion Planners Using Funnel Libraries

    A. E. Gurgen, A. Majumdar, S. Veer

    arXiv preprint, 2021.

Journal articles 09

  1. Safety Evaluation of Motion Plans Using Trajectory Predictors as Forward Reachable Set Estimators

    *K. Chakraborty, *Z. Feng, *S. Veer, A. Sharma, W. Ding, S. Topan, B. Ivanovic, M. Pavone, S. Bansal

    IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, 11(3):3262-3269, 2026. (*equal contribution)

  2. Task-Driven Detection of Distribution Shifts With Statistical Guarantees for Robot Learning

    *A. Farid, *S. Veer, D. Pachisia, A. Majumdar

    IEEE Transactions on Robotics, 41:926-945, 2025. (*equal contribution)

  3. Wolf: Dense Video Captioning with a World Summarization Framework

    B. Li, L. Zhu, R. Tian, S. Tan, Y. Chen, Y. Lu, Y. Cui, S. Veer, M. Ehrlich, J. Philion, X. Weng, F. Xue, L. Fan, Y. Zhu, J. Kautz, A. Tao, M.-Y. Liu, S. Fidler, B. Ivanovic, T. Darrell, J. Malik, S. Han, M. Pavone

    Transactions on Machine Learning Research (TMLR), 2025.

  4. Interactive Joint Planning for Autonomous Vehicles

    Y. Chen, S. Veer, P. Karkus, M. Pavone

    IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, 9(2):987-994, 2024.

  5. Analytical Solution to a Time-Varying LIP Model for Quadrupedal Walking on a Vertically Oscillating Surface

    A. Iqbal, S. Veer, Y. Gu

    Mechatronics, 96:103073, 2023.

  6. Interactive Dynamic Walking: Learning Gait Switching Policies with Generalization Guarantees

    P. Chand, S. Veer, I. Poulakakis

    IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RAL), 2022.

  7. Switched Systems with Multiple Equilibria Under Disturbances: Boundedness and Practical Stability

    S. Veer, I. Poulakakis

    IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control (TAC), 2020.

  8. Input-to-State Stability of Periodic Orbits of Systems with Impulse Effects via Poincaré Analysis

    S. Veer, Rakesh, I. Poulakakis

    IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control (TAC), 2019.

  9. Approximate Spring Balancing of Linkages to Reduce Actuator Requirements

    S. Veer, S. Sujatha

    Mechanism and Machine Theory (MMT), 2015.

Conference papers 33

  1. Modular Safety Guardrails Are Necessary for Foundation-Model-Enabled Robots in the Real World

    †J. Kim, †W. Chen, †D. Soleymanzadeh, ‡Y. Ding, ‡X. Gao, Z. Tu, R. Zhang, F. Fei, S. Veer, §Y. Lyu, §M. Zheng, §Y. Gu

    ICML, 2026 (Position Track). (†equal co-lead contribution; ‡equal second-author contribution; §equal senior advising)

  2. Sim2Val: Leveraging Correlation Across Test Platforms for Variance-Reduced Metric Estimation

    R. Luo, H. Yang, M. Watson, A. Sharma, S. Veer, E. Schmerling, M. Pavone

    CoRL, 2025.

  3. Online Aggregation of Trajectory Predictors

    A. Tong, A. Sharma, S. Veer, M. Pavone, H. Yang

    ICRA, 2025.

  4. LoRD: Adapting Differentiable Driving Policies to Distribution Shifts

    C. Diehl, P. Karkus, S. Veer, M. Pavone, T. Bertram

    ICRA, 2025.

  5. System-Level Safety Monitoring and Recovery for Perception Failures in Autonomous Vehicles

    *K. Chakraborty, *Z. Feng, S. Veer, A. Sharma, B. Ivanovic, M. Pavone, S. Bansal

    ICRA, 2025. (*equal contribution)

  6. Driving Everywhere with Large Language Model Policy Adaptation

    B. Li, Y. Wang, J. Mao, B. Ivanovic, S. Veer, K. Leung, M. Pavone

    CVPR, 2024.

  7. RuleFuser: An Evidential Bayes Approach for Rule Injection in Imitation Learned Planners and Predictors for Robustness under Distribution Shifts

    J. Patrikar, *S. Veer, *A. Sharma, M. Pavone, S. Scherer

    International Symposium on Robotics Research (ISRR), 2024. (*equal advising)

  8. Multi-Predictor Fusion: Combining Learning-based and Rule-based Trajectory Predictors

    S. Veer, A. Sharma, M. Pavone

    CoRL, 2023.

  9. PAC-Bayes Generalization Certificates for Learned Inductive Conformal Prediction

    A. Sharma, S. Veer, A. Hancock, H. Yang, M. Pavone, A. Majumdar

    NeurIPS, 2023.

  10. Task-Aware Risk Estimation of Perception Failures for Autonomous Vehicles

    P. Antonante, S. Veer, K. Leung, X. Weng, L. Carlone, M. Pavone

    RSS, 2023.

  11. Receding Horizon Planning with Rule Hierarchies for Autonomous Vehicles

    S. Veer, K. Leung, R. K. Cosner, Y. Chen, P. Karkus, M. Pavone

    ICRA, 2023.

  12. Guided Conditional Diffusion for Controllable Traffic Simulation

    Z. Zhong, D. Rempe, D. Xu, Y. Chen, S. Veer, T. Che, B. Ray, M. Pavone

    ICRA, 2023.

  13. Learning Autonomous Vehicle Safety Concepts from Demonstrations

    K. Leung, S. Veer, E. Schmerling, M. Pavone

    ACC, 2023.

  14. Asymptotic Stabilization of Aperiodic Trajectories of a Hybrid-Linear Inverted Pendulum Walking on a Vertically Moving Surface

    A. Iqbal, S. Veer, Y. Gu

    ACC, 2023.

  15. Task-Relevant Failure Detection for Trajectory Predictors in Autonomous Vehicles

    *A. Farid, *S. Veer, B. Ivanovic, K. Leung, M. Pavone

    CoRL, 2022. (Equal Contribution)

  16. Stronger Generalization Guarantees for Robot Learning by Combining Generative Models and Real-World Data

    A. Agarwal, S. Veer, A. Z. Ren, A. Majumdar

    ICRA, 2022.

  17. Task-Driven Out-of-Distribution Detection with Statistical Guarantees for Robot Learning

    *A. Farid, *S. Veer, A. Majumdar

    CoRL, 2021. (Equal Contribution)

    Video, Code

  18. Probably Approximately Correct Vision-Based Planning using Motion Primitives

    S. Veer, A. Majumdar

    CoRL, 2020.

    Video, Code

  19. Generalization Guarantees for Imitation Learning

    A. Z. Ren, S. Veer, A. Majumdar

    CoRL, 2020.

    Video, Code

  20. LagNetViP: A Lagrangian Neural Network for Video Prediction

    C. Allen-Blanchette, S. Veer, A. Majumdar, N. E. Leonard

    AAAI Symposium on Physics-guided AI for Accelerating Scientific Discovery, 2020.

  21. An Adaptive Supervisory Control Approach to Dynamic Locomotion Under Parametric Uncertainty

    P. Chand, S. Veer, I. Poulakakis

    ICRA, 2020.

  22. Robustness of Periodic Orbits of Impulsive Systems à la Poincaré

    S. Veer, I. Poulakakis

    CDC, 2019.

  23. PD based Robust Quadratic Programs for Robotic Systems

    S. Kolathaya, S. Veer

    IROS, 2019.

  24. Safe Adaptive Switching among Dynamical Movement Primitives: Application to 3D Limit-Cycle Walkers

    S. Veer, I. Poulakakis

    ICRA, 2019.

  25. Practical Stability of Switched Systems With Multiple Equilibria Under Disturbances

    S. Veer, I. Poulakakis

    ACC, 2019.

  26. Generation of and Switching among Limit-Cycle Bipedal Walking Gaits

    S. Veer, M. S. Motahar, I. Poulakakis

    CDC, 2017.

  27. Adaptation of Limit-Cycle Walkers for Collaborative Tasks: A Supervisory Switching Control Approach

    S. Veer, M. S. Motahar, I. Poulakakis

    IROS, 2017.

  28. Almost Driftless Navigation of 3D Limit-Cycle Walking Bipeds

    S. Veer, M. S. Motahar, I. Poulakakis

    IROS, 2017.

  29. Steering a 3D Limit-Cycle Walker for Collaboration with a Leader

    M. S. Motahar, S. Veer, I. Poulakakis

    IROS, 2017.

  30. Composing Limit Cycles for Motion Planning of 3D Bipedal Walkers

    M. S. Motahar, S. Veer, I. Poulakakis

    CDC, 2016.

  31. Local Input-to-State Stability of Dynamic Walking Under Persistent External Excitation using Hybrid Zero Dynamics

    S. Veer, M. S. Motahar, I. Poulakakis

    ACC, 2016.

  32. Integrating Dynamic Walking and Arm Impedance Control for Cooperative Transportation

    M. S. Motahar, S. Veer, J. Huang, I. Poulakakis

    IROS, 2015.

  33. On the Adaptation of Dynamic Walking to Persistent External Forcing using Hybrid Zero Dynamics Control

    S. Veer, M. S. Motahar, I. Poulakakis

    IROS, 2015.

Patents 09

Granted patents

  1. Learning autonomous vehicle safety concepts from demonstrations

    Karen Yan Ming Leung, Sushant Veer, Edward Fu Schmerling, Marco Pavone

    US12485890B2, granted 2025.

  2. Task-relevant failure detection for trajectory prediction in machines

    Alec Farid, Sushant Veer, Boris Ivanovic, Karen Yan Ming Leung, Marco Pavone

    US12441366B2, granted 2025.

  3. A Semi-Flexion Orthotic Knee

    M. Rohith, S. Veer, S. Sujatha

    Indian Patent No. 463141 (Application No. 3088/CHE/2013), granted 2023.

Patent applications

  1. Techniques for Controlling Autonomous Vehicles Using Vision-Language Models

    Apoorva Sharma, Sushant Veer, Yan Wang, Marco Pavone

    US20250333079A1 (Application No. 18/935,346), published Oct. 30, 2025; pending application.

  2. Techniques for Adaptive Driving Using Language Models

    Boyi Li, Boris Ivanovic, Karen Leung, Marco Pavone, Sushant Veer, Yue Wang

    US20250153735A1 (Application No. 18/933,354), published May 15, 2025; pending application.

  3. Operating Law Aware Planning Criteria for Intelligent Machines and Neural Motion Planners Integrated with the Planning Criteria

    Sushant Veer, Apoorva Sharma, Karen Leung, Marco Pavone

    US20250108830A1, published Apr. 3, 2025; pending application.

  4. Interactive Motion Planning for Autonomous Systems and Applications

    Yuxiao Chen, Sushant Veer, Peter Karkus, Marco Pavone

    US20250058802A1, published Feb. 20, 2025; pending application.

  5. Techniques for Combining Learning-Based and Rule-Based Model Predictions

    Sushant Veer, Apoorva Sharma, Marco Pavone

    US20250005447A1, published Jan. 2, 2025; pending application.

  6. Ego Trajectory Planning with Rule Hierarchies for Autonomous Vehicles

    Sushant Veer, Karen Leung, Ryan Cosner, Yuxiao Chen, Marco Pavone

    US20240199074A1, published Jun. 20, 2024; pending application.

Posters & presentations 03

  1. Physical Collaboration between Dynamically Walking Bipedal Robots and Humans

    S. Veer (Presenter), M. S. Motahar, I. Poulakakis

    Research Day, UD Mechanical Engineering, Newark, Delaware, April 27, 2017. Best Poster Award in Robotics and Controls.

  2. Integration of Dynamic Walking with Arm Impedance Control for Safe Physical Human-Biped Collaboration

    S. Veer (Presenter), M. S. Motahar, I. Poulakakis

    Workshop at RSS, Ann Arbor, Michigan, June 18-22, 2016.

  3. Design of A Standing Wheelchair

    H. Chaudhari, S. Veer (Presenter), S. Srinivasan

    International Society of Prosthetics and Orthotics World Congress, Hyderabad, India, February 4-7, 2013. Yeongchi Wu International Education Award.

Education & training