Best Paper Award, International Conference on Social Robotics + AI 2025 (Sep 2025)
Melbourne Design Awards 2025 — Gold, for 'KOALA' Plant Health Assessment and Shrub Pruning Robot (Jul 2025)
New Generation Star Award, IEEE/RSJ IROS 2024, Abu Dhabi (Oct 2024)
IDA Design Awards 2024 — Honorable Mention, for 'Meerkat' Building Infrastructure Audit Robot (Jan 2025)
IDA Design Awards 2021 - Gold, For 'flipX' - a compact reconfigurable chair designed for home-based workouts [Link]
IDA Design Awards 2021 - Silver, For 'SoGa Chair' - a configurable design from a large bench to a back-to-back backrest chair [Link ]
IDA Design Awards 2021 - Silver, For 'PlayBench' - an amalgamation of playgrounds, theatres and benches [Link]
IDA Design Awards 2021 - Bronze, For 'Kanga' - a childcare seat design [Link]
First Runner-up, MathWorks Mini Drone Competition at IROS 2018
Nanjing City Prize (Robotics Innovation Awards) - IEEE RO-MAN 2018
Best paper award - Robotics and Control track, MERCon - 2016
EESoc award for the best Elect. Eng. undergraduate project 2014, Electrical Engineering Society (EESoc), University of Moratuwa
Dean's List - semester 8, 7, 5 and 4 of the BSc Eng Hons Degree, Faculty of Engineering, University of Moratuwa
Professional Activities
Editorial Roles:
Associate Editor, Frontiers in Robotics and AI (2024 – Present)
Associate Editor, Frontiers in Manufacturing Technology (2024 – Present)
Associate Editor, Discover Applied Sciences, Springer (2024 – Present)
Topic Editor, Electronics, MDPI (2021 – 2023)
Advisory & Industry:
Product Advisory Council Member, Wefaa Robotics Pte Ltd (2024 – Present)
Mentor, Ministry of Education (MOE) Innovation Programme 2025
Conference Organization:
Track Co-Chair, Robotics for Smart Society, DTDA 2025, Japan
Track Co-Chair, Robotics and Intelligent Systems, MERCon 2025, 2026
Track Co-Chair, Robotics and Intelligent Systems, EECon 2026
Technical Programme Committees, ICIPRoB 2026, 2024, 2022, 2020; EECon 2026, 2021, 2018; ICIAfS 2021, 2018; RCAR 2021, 2020, 2019; RAAICON 2021
Program Co-Chair, International Conference on Electrical Engineering (EECon) 2024
Organizing Team, IEEE Region 10 Robotics Competition 2024, 2022
Session Chair, IROS 2022, AROB 2022, ReMAR 2021
Organizing Committee, RoboRoarZ 2025, 2024, 2023
Organizing Committee, Global Robotics Games 2023
Co-Chair Technical Program, IEEE Region 10 Humanitarian Technology Conference (R10 HTC) 2018
Judging & Evaluation:
Guest Judge, Pei Hwa Virtual Hackathon 2024
Judge Panel, IEEE Region 10 Robotics Competition 2023
Judge Panel, iNTUition v9.0, IEEE NTU Student Branch
Grant Evaluator, University of Moratuwa
PhD/MSc Thesis Examiner, Sathyabama Institute of Science and Technology, India; University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka
Professional Membership:
Senior Member, IEEE (RAS, IES) — 2023 – Present
Member, IEEE (RAS, SMC) — 2015 – 2023
Assistant Secretary, IEEE RAS Sri Lanka Section Chapter — 2017 – 2019
Invited Talks & Panel Discussion
Panel Discussion, "Workshop on Circular Robotics: Designing Sustainable Autonomy for a Finite World," IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2026, Vienna, Austria (Jun 2026)
Invited Talk, "Robotics and AI for Inspection and Maintenance: Challenges and Opportunities," Monthly Webinar, The Institution of Engineers, Sri Lanka (May 2026)
Panel Discussion, Applied Robotics & Artificial Intelligence Symposium (ARAIS) 2026, Singapore (May 2026)
Guest Talk, "Autonomy and Planning Across Reconfigurable Robots, Morphologies, and Environments," Morph Lab, Imperial College London, UK (Feb 2026)