Vijay Pradeep is a robotics engineer and angel investor, and has been involved in the robotics sector for the past 15 years. He is currently the founder & CTO of Virtana, a robotics software & development company in Trinidad & Tobago, aiming to grow the Caribbean’s impact in the global robotics ecosystem.
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. Vijay splits his time between San Francisco, California, USA and St Augustine, Trinidad & Tobago.
Blog Posts
VR/AR Panel Discussion @ TechBeach Retreat, Dec 2017
Iberostar Resorts, Montego Bay, Jamiaca (Dec 2017)
Virtana, a robotics software development & outsourcing company, works with robotics companies all over the world, all while being based in Trinidad. Given the exponential growth in the field of robotics worldwide, there is a huge opportunity for companies like Virtana to increase Trinidad & Tobago’s impact & exports in the field of robotics. However, Virtana’s growth has been limited by its ability to hire local computer scientists, roboticists, & engineers. As such, the local mindset needs to change in several ways to help steer current students, young professionals, & experienced engineers towards cutting edge fields like robotics, and local companies like Virtana.