Hi, I'm Ninh Nguyen
PhD Student in AI & Robotics at UNC Charlotte with 10+ years of full-stack engineering experience. Building intelligent systems from algorithms to production.
Where Research Meets Engineering
I'm a PhD student in the Robotics Lab at UNC Charlotte, working on multi-robot planning under uncertainty. My recent projects study cooperative UGV-UAV routing where aerial inspection reduces ground risk.
I'm also extending Vision-Language-Action (VLA) models to constraint-aware robot-arm manipulation — combining learned intent with provably safe trajectory optimization.
Before the PhD, I spent ~10 years as a senior software engineer delivering production services and full-stack apps. I bring that production mindset to research: clean code, observability, and reproducible pipelines from simulation to hardware.
Robotics Research
Multi-robot planning under uncertainty, cooperative UGV-UAV routing, and constraint-aware manipulation.
AI & Vision
Vision-Language-Action models, YOLO-based perception, and trajectory optimization with safety filters.
Full-Stack Engineering
10+ years building production services and apps on AWS with Docker, CI/CD, and microservices.
PhD Student
Robotics Lab at UNC Charlotte, working with Prof. Akella on planning algorithms and proofs.
Technical Arsenal
Languages
AI / ML
Robotics
Frontend
Backend
DevOps & Cloud
Academic Contributions
Publications
Optimal Partitioning of Inspection Tasks for UGV-UAV Cooperation in Disjoint-Path Graph
N. Nguyen and S. Akella (2026)
Submitted to RSS
Dynamic UGV-UAV Cooperative Path Planning in Uncertain Environments
N. Nguyen and S. Akella (2026)
Accepted to ICRA
From Reinforcement Learning to Vision–Language–Action: A Historical Review of Robot Control Models
N. Nguyen (2026)
Selected Works
From production web apps to robotics research — a blend of software engineering and cutting-edge AI.
BeStronger
Nutrition & workout platform. Migrated a Laravel monolith to microservices, shipped React Native apps, and added a computer-vision calorie estimator for meal photos.
MakeTrail
Travel journaling & route sharing app with native mobile clients. Full-stack architecture with Go backend and Next.js web frontend.
Brick 3D
Unity mobile game with shareable creations. Players build 3D structures and share them with the community. Go-powered backend for real-time features.
Flooded Detector
Real-time flood detection system using DJI drones and YOLO object detection. Aerial surveillance pipeline for disaster response.
Husky Line Coverage
Autonomous robot path planning for complete line coverage. Implemented and benchmarked coverage algorithms on the Clearpath Husky UGV platform.
Let's Connect
Whether you're interested in research collaboration, have a project idea, or just want to chat about robotics and AI — I'd love to hear from you.
tnguy248@charlotte.edu
Location
Charlotte, NC