Vijay Pradeep is a robotics engineer and angel investor, and has been involved in the robotics sector for the past 15 years.  Vijay moved to Trinidad in 2017 to start Virtana, a robotics software development & consulting company aiming to grow the Caribbean’s impact in the global robotics ecosystem.  Since then, Vijay has grown the Virtana team to over 20 people, and established collaborations with robotics companies all over the world, including tech giants like Google, to help build the next generation of robotic solutions, all while sitting right here in Trinidad.

 He was a Co-Founder of hiDOF, Inc., a Silicon Valley robotics firm that worked with Fortune 500 companies and startups in a variety of areas, including VR/AR, vehicle autonomy, medical imaging, drones, personal aviation, and industrial automation.  After acquisition by Google, hiDOF joined the Daydream VR effort, where Vijay led the sensor characterization and factory calibration teams, helping to launch Daydream View, Tango, & ARCore.

Vijay received his B.S. in Computer Systems, focusing on Robotics and Mechatronics, and his M.S. in Mechanical Engineering focusing on Control Systems, both from Stanford University. His academic contributions have been showcased in a variety of robotics conferences, journals, and books. Vijay’s contributions to ROS (Robot Operating System) and the PR2 robot platform are now used widely in the open source robotics community.