DMTS Application for the Fellow

Dr. Ramachandra Budihal

Distinguished Member of Technical Staff,
Chief Architect and Practice Head,
Wipro Autonomous Vehicle and Robotics
Executive Summary
I am an avid techie - I am keen in applying technologies that can change the way we live and
enhance the qualitative experience of life. I started my career two and a half decades back with
Wipro. I research and architect on Cognitive Systems and Networks, Robots and Human
Computer Interactions.

I am an organization startup strategist - I specialize in setting up Collaborative

Consortium/co-creation org structures. I started Aerospace Network Research Consortium along
with the Boeing company and India's premier research institute, IISc, Wipro and HCL. I work
with IEEE research communities and teach in leading design schools of India as visiting faculty.

I am a social entrepreneur – I have digitized more than a million ancient heritage

manuscripts of India through a non-profit research outfit. I was awarded a Presidential honor in
2007 by then President of India - Dr. Abdul Kalam in recognition of my efforts to develop and
use technology for Indian classical works, culture and heritage preservation and promotion.

Significant milestones
1. Presidential Honour @ Rashtrapati Bhavan - 2007
2. Talk in TEDIndia - 2009
3. Who is who of the world - 2010
4. Top 50 Influentials of Bangalore - DNA INDIA report - 2010
5. IEEE ComSoc Award - for best long paper – 2011
6. Distinguished Member of Technical Staff of Wipro - 2014
7. Ph.D. in Cognitive Computing(AI) and communications from IISc - 2017

Specialties: Research in AI and Cognitive systems and networks, Imaging, Image processing,
Computer vision, AR/VR/MR/XR, Robotics, HCI, and HCD, Design thinking, aesthestics,
philosophy, cognitive/behavioral psychology as applied to design etc.

Visibility: My geeky credentials and my work have been featured in MIT TechReview, WIRED,
NYTIMES, Times of India, Indian Express, The Hindu, Bangalore Mirror, DNA, Deccan Herald and
many other magazines.

Current work: I actively develop systems such as Social Robots, RPAs, Bots, New HCI, Digital
tourism and Augmented Reality systems, Bio-Inspired models for networks & systems etc.
Currently, I am involved in the grounds-up design of an Autonomous car technology apart from
Robotics and AI platforms for Global market.
Value generation
Creating and delivering through ecosystem of partners - I have consistently worked
with various ecosystem - whether it is academia or startups to learn and link various ideas to
create new, highly differentiated value through various products and services and current one
being extremely scalable and cross sell-able platform called WAVES and WiPoD
WAVES platform that powers WiPoD - Wipro autonomous car or SDV (2016 – till date) is full
of multidisciplinary IP assets which are to be cross leveraged in automating various processes
such as back-end bill processing, retail inventory management, search and rescue operations
etc., apart from direct applications in shop floors, airports, smart urban transportation, campus
travel etc., Its computer vision algorithms are generic that can be used to automate several
BPO process and is yet to be exploited. 3D processing can be used in health care and life
sciences besides in product design and development, Digital applications. Various optimization
algorithms that are part of WAVES can power automation of Air traffic control, Stock market,
banking experience applications etc.
I expect this technology can be scaled up to generate at least 50 million USD in next 2-3 years
time by both direct and indirect selling. We have started our marketing and GTM strategies.
CTO projects - a. I conceptualized and designed computer vision technologies for fake bill/ID
detection(2015) using two pronged intelligent image processing approach. We also converted
this PoC into a production grade system that is currently implemented as a part of automation
of fake bill detection under Wividus "soft bill submission" scheme of things and is serving them
as a legal compliance for authentication. b. I designed and architected an emotion and
deception (lie detection) analysis system(2014-15) as a part of Wipro's automation effort of
Interviewing bot. This is one of the most advanced and innovative projects that I executed in
CTO. c. I also built OCR for document analysis and recognition (2015-16) of KYC documents as
part of eKYC of Wipro HOLMES. This was based on my 2 decades of effort on image processing
and character recognition, I trained several people and who now continue and contribute for
various projects in CTO and HOLMES.
ANRC projects - a. Cognitive Radio network platform(2009-2014), one of the most complex AI
systems that was built over a period of 5 years for intelligent spectrum access. This involved
building and end-to-end system from grounds up and that resulted in my PhD dissertation. b.
Driver intent and behavior analysis system(2014-15) - extension of biometric pilot
authentication system, this furthered the objective of understanding the driver intent, behavior
and analyzed the status of the driver, this is today one of the fundamental building blocks of
ADAS. c. Energy Harvested Wireless sensor network (2009-2015) - We collaborated with IISc to
built an IoT platform that harvests ambient energy and communicates over the network and it
IISc coined this as "ZEN" - zero energy network platform rightly. d. We have also worked on
Radio localization using Wifi for indoors(20115-16). I worked as PI for a,b,d and Co-PI for c.
Personal projects - I am extremely passionate in applying tech for some of the most pressing,
neglected areas such as heritage etc. By taking up such projects as hobby, I not only
contributed for our country's needs but also networked with researchers of world's most prolific
institutes such as SUNY, RIT, MIT, Stanford, IIT, IISc etc. This helped me to understand and
learn new things that I brought it from outside into my work inside Wipro. In the past I worked
on DSP, IP, Imaging and we built a big practice of DSP/Multimedia from ground up, this has
generated more than 200M USD in last 20 years. I worked on building "Pratham" - a social robot
with India Innovation Labs, which won an IEEE award. This was ahead of its time and was
unveiled by Mr. Premji. Perhaps this project helped me to build from grounds up the Wipod even
though there was no precedence of this in Wipro.

In summary, many projects listed above are some of most complex projects executed by Wipro
in terms of its transformational value. These projects involved design and analysis of diverse
set of algorithms and its development from grounds up by combing the power of math, DSP,
Image processing, machine learning, AI etc. I have worked on these diverse systems and can
effortlessly connect things to create a concoction of novel and interesting path breaking
solutions.
Execution
In a span of 27 years of my career in Wipro, I have executed various projects of varying
degrees and scales of complexity and size. I can vouch and say that I have more or less
achieved 100% success in most of the projects I had taken up irrespective of its complexity,
challenges on both technical and managerial. I am presenting one such recent project here.

I envisioned much ahead - I proposed development of an SDV platform in DMTS conclave in

2015 for the first time.
WiPoD is an and end to end SDV platform - hardware, software, electical and mechanical
systems fully integrated and orchestrated by design thinking approach to perform in tandem to
realize a fully autonomous car - this perhaps one of the most complex projects taken by Wipro
in the recent past. It involved complex challenges beyond the realm of software or hardware
(traditional strengths of Wipro PES), it involved AI, ML/DL, mechanical systems, 3D processing,
Cognitive learning and decision systems besides electrical systems to be controlled with
significant accuracy. We had to work with outside vendors, train them and get things designed
and fabricated as per our requirements, besides identifying and procurement of various sensors
that are needed to be used to build a complex platform like this.
Most importantly, I scaled up the team from zero to significant strength, while none
had relevant experience, I mentored, coached and trained them on various technologies,
software, tools, algorithms in AI, CV etc., and also got consultants to help in areas we needed
better experts. Today, team is fully aware of what it takes to build an autonomous system
Networking with tech and design schools - I ventured out to find more people to work in
form of interns as we had to do lots of experiments before arriving at a methodology or
approach for final inclusion. overall about 40-50 people worked in this project from various
reputed institutes of India. One of the hallmarks of this project was to build an experiential
system that positively engages with people who travel in it. Design, aesthestics, styling of car
was not available as an expertise in Wipro, Since I have been visiting faculty in various design
schools across India, I leveraged this to get some 12-15 people work on auto product and
experience design
Working with Professors at IISc - Some of the complex computer vision, machine/deep
learning algorithms, cognitive decision systems used in this project are result of my previous
work in PhD and at ANRC, IISc labs. My special relationship with IISc professors not only helped
in getting required assistance in ramping up the skills of my team in Computer vision and
machine learning but also I could get access to GPU servers and lab space to host my team to
build best of class CV and cognitive algorithms for SDV program. This is biggest game changer
in the whole execution, else we would not have had this concept to reality in just 8-9 months of
time from zero to working product demo.
Building ecosystem of partners in absence of skills inside - Yet another significant
hallmark of this program is finding of right vendors to support R&D effort of this challenging
new product development in such short span of time. Many people in the team felt that
timelines expected by management was not feasible, on the contrary, I said that we should
raise to occasion and try our best to do whatever it takes to deliver as per management
expectations. Therefore, we haven't left any stone unturned to achieve the milestone promised
- July 25th 2016 - First proto and March 2017 - Intermediate limited experience vehicle with 2
people mobility. I identified vendors who could take this challenging assignment even though
they knew that this is only one such order and there are no plans for repeated and continuous
orders.
Overall, we have proved that with support of a trusty leadership on the top from Jayanta, Bala
and Sanjiv and a hardworking team if passionately driven, anything is possible even country
like in India and a large organization like Wipro.
Credibility and recognition
I have a long list of credibility and recognition in my career. I have already presented this in
previous DMTS presentation, however, for sake of completeness I am reiterating the same:

I am a National awardee - President of India (Dr. Kalam in 2007) honoured me with

"Badrayan Vyas Samman" for my unwavering commitment in development of technologies and
tools for protecting national knowledge heritage.
I am who is who of the world. - listed in Marquis who is who of the world 2010 edition
I was 50 top Influentials of Bangalore 2010 – reported by DNA India after a detailed survey
and was listed along Mr. Premji, Mr. NRN, Mr. Nilekani from IT industry.
I am a TED speaker, spoken in TED and multiple TEDx conferences.
I was featured in MIT Tech Review, WIRED, NY Times and various national news papers
covering my work in tech innovations. I also got an IEEE comsoc award for my work in
Robotics Within Wipro I have own individual awards many times in a row. I have given multiple
invited talks in Delhi, Pune, Hyd, Bangalore etc., in events hosted by various reputed academic
and govt. Bodies.
I am an IEEE, ACM member for their various societies. I am also an active member of
Interactive Design Foundation a premier body of Designer community. I have an open invitation
to speak at NASSCOM on AI and Robotics for their next event coming in Delhi in next couple of
months.
I serve as member Technical committes of IEEE – I had been in technical committes of
IEEE Comsoc ANTS and currently will be on IEEE Interspeech 2018
I am part of policy making teams – I worked with Ministry of Tourism and Culture for
formulation of National Digitization standards in the past and currently being considered as
a working committee member for formulating a Policy for Autonomous cars for Govt. Of
Karnataka which might eventually be used for drafting a National Policy for SDVs in India by
Govt. Of India. I was also part of planning and program commitee for National council for Science
Museums, under Govt. Of India.
I am a "Visiting Expert faculty" at reputed National Institute of Design and other design
schools such as SID and DYPDC I have represented Wipro in various International conferences
where my papers have been accepted in the past.
I am a passionate inventor - I have one individual patent granted (IP,CV) and 5 filings (CV,IP,
AI, ML) done with at least 10 different ideas in various stages of filing. From my team I have a
pipeline of atleast 25 patents in SDV this year. I am writing 2 research papers. I have about
total 15 research papers published in various IEEE conferences and reputed Journals
I have spoken in Future ready session of Wipro on Anticipatory systems
I informally mentor a lot of people in student community who are buddy researchers and
entrepreneurs. one such student has started a company successfully with funding recently.
I spend a lot of my personal time in building lot of material to mentor and coach my team to
perform great aspects in both career and life. This way they think that I am indispensable to
them and Wipro, it also gives them a sense of pride to work with me as I share a lot of my
knowledge and experience freely with a genuine interest to help people succeed.
I was recently awarded a PhD - in building cognitive engine using AI and ML for intelligent
spectrum access and management by one of the World's top 10 small universities - Indian
Institute of Science
I am a Distinguished Member of Technical staf of Wipro - important contribution of mine
as a DMTS Distinguished Member is that I conceptualized WiPoD, an SDV, wrote a tech
roadmap, defined its goals and milestones and with help of Jayanta and Sanjiv we could get
funding to execute the same. I have also created various high level GTM paths in various
domains for this platform and we will be working out a detailed GTM for this platform and
services in next couple of weeks so as to grow this into a multi million dollar business in next
couple of years.

Recommendations
We have known Ramachandra Budihal for over 15 years as we got associated with his
Mahabharata Samshodhana Project - a sincere and selfless effort to digitize hundreds of
thousands of ancient manuscripts. We were fascinated by the passion and dedication
Ramachandra Budihal demonstrated not only on the accuracy of the technology aspect, but
also the productization aspect and navigating through various entities and people to make it a
successful endeavor.

As part of this whole digitization effort Ramachandra Budihal demonstrated some extra
ordinary technologies such as Augmented and Virtual reality by bringing Vijayanagara king
Krishna Devaraya live on the stage in front of thousands of people at the first Ted India
conference held at Mysore. He then went on to create many of these technologies as part of
India innovation labs.

Ramachandra Budihal has the ability to think out of the box and can foresee future
technologies and can turn them into reality. With the right productization team behind him,
India can significantly leapfrog by creating valuable products to mankind in the areas of
Artificial Intelligence, AR, VR etc.

We wish Ramachandra Budihal nothing but the best as he pursues the next level of his career.
It has been a great pleasure knowing and working with him.

B V Jagadeesh
Silicon valley serial entrepreneur, Saratoga, CA
www.KAAJventures.com
"Entrepreneur's Trusted Partner"

"Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Not Talent; Not Genius; Not
Education. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. ---Calvin Coolidge,
January 17, 1914, Commonwealth of Massachusetts Senate

Ingenuity & Ramachandra Budihal

With great aplomb I recall my glorious association with Dr Ramachandra Budihal during 2001 to
2004 when I was working as Principal Secretary, Department of Culture, Tourism and
Information. Those were extremely exciting days of digital re-engineering with pioneering
approaches initiated at the behest of Budihal. The great start was with the Department of
Gazetteers, where there were district gazetteers more than 100 years old. They had become
fragile and illegible having too much dirt. Recomposing them would have been herculean and
reprinting as it were, meaningless. Ramachandru was able to scan them, peel off the dirt
digitally and enable us to print extremely cleaned scanned copies and make it available both
digitally and in book form to readers. This was followed up with digitisation of state archives,
where all the historical documents were digitised and catalogued with text in the image being
searchable, a great novelty. When we took up the epic project of digitally creating Dasa and
Vachana Sahithyas, both in words and sounds, Budihal created a digital search tool enabling
use of English key board itself though the text was composed in Kannada. Also came out with a
good application for compressing audio portion of the document to manageable size. This
momentous epochal work was globally hailed by Kannadigas with pride. Being extremely
creative, for the promotion of Tourism in Hampi, he came out with a path breaking augmented
virtual reality concept and application, which was selected for the Ted talk. Budihal’s talk was
received with standing ovation by the spell bound audience. For the first time in the country,
we could create the most innovative virtual museums and archaeological directory. These mind
blowing digital innovations in these archaic departments were simply unprecedented. When the
12th Finance Commission headed by Sri Rangarajan visited the State in 2004, a presentation
was made on the digitisation of cultural aspect of the state, an unprecedented event even
before any finance previous commissions or by any other state. The Finance Commission,
based on our presentation, even allocated funds for the States for digitisation of culture and
heritage aspects for the first time in its history of the country. Yes, Ramachandru enabled me to
create unprecedented history that too under a governmental set up. Thereafter and till now I
keep interacting with Budihal whenever I needed to get inspired.
I firmly believe that Dr. Budihal richly deserves elevation as “Fellow" under the
Wipro’s DMTS program and much much beyond.
Dr C S Kedar IAS
Retired Additional Chief Secretary, Government of Karnataka,
Former Additional Secretary to Govt. of India, Cabinet Secretariat, Rashtrapati Bhavan,
Former Director General, ESIC, Govt. of India

It is a matter of pleasure for me to place on record my personal commendation of the high

standards of professional and technical competence of
Dr. Ramachandra Budihal. A Govt. of India’s committee (of which I was then the Chair) to select
scholars for “Maharishi Badarayan Vyas Samman” by the President of India, selected Dr.
Budihal for the honour. That award was to honour young scholars for their ability to identify and
locate areas of common interest between the ancient classical knowledge systems and modern
science.

Remedy for the inevitable dehumanizing influence of economics driven by high-end

technologies on the culture of the inner-man can be found in the resources of our cultural past
which can, for want of a better word, be called ‘Spiritual’. In the current age of explosive,
disruptive technologies, only those intellectuals who can visualize the critical inter-face
between the stunning developments in science on the one hand and of social security and
national interests on the other, that can handle the forces of change and turbulence. Dr.
Budihal has this potential and promise.

I support Dr. Budihal for elevation as “Fellow" under the Wipro’s DMTS program.

Justice M N Venkatachaliah
Former Chief Justice of India
Former Chairman, National Human Rights Commission
Chairman, Constitution Review committee

Recommendation for DMTS Fellow

I have worked with Rama for nearly six years in diverse areas from Digital experience, Image
Processing and AI. His ability to create new concepts and solutions based on deep theoretical
studies and experimentation is amazing. He is an extraordinary thinker par excellence, self
driven and motivated to accomplish the end results. His depth of knowledge in several fields
and design thinking makes him a role model for many aspiring technology experts. Having
created several path breaking solutions and the more recent creation of Autonomous Car he
truly deserves a Fellow recognition.
Select Projects he worked on.

1.FNOL
2.Virtual Fitting room
3.AR based field assist for Cars
4.Intelligent interviewing system
5.Automation of bill processing for Wipro - fake bill recognition
6.visiting Faculty in Design at NiD, SiD and DYPDC

Ramprasad K R
GM and Fellow

Recommendation for DMTS Fellow.

I recommend Rama for DMTS fellow. For the last 14 months, Rama has been the Chief Architect
and Lead Designer for the WiPod initiative. Outstanding contributions in conceptualizing and
building an autonomous vehicle from grounds up. He guided a team (mostly of them without
prior industry experience) with great passion and energy and helped resolve critical design
and technical challenges. He also helped build an eco-system with leading academic institutes
(IISC, MIT, NIT, DYPD etc), startups (Roboware), and manufacturing vendors (Sai Automation).
His knowledge, thoughts and ideas on design thinking, AI and robotics are valued greatly by
Profs in leading academic institutes as well as by industry experts.

I wish Rama the very best in his pursuit of DMTS fellowship.

Jayanta Dey
VP and CTO, MNT
DMTS council member

I have known Dr. Ramachandra Budihal since 2000, when we were neighbours. Initially, I knew
him as a passionate young man, with rich knowledge in technology and Sanskrit, with a vision
to develop and deploy the best possible technologies to digitize the ancient wisdom lying in
palm leaf manuscripts at many places in India and also to bring out the knowledge stored in
these legacy documents. The presidential honour he received in 2007 is a testimony to the
above efforts of Dr. Rama Budihal.
Subsequently, he got selected to pursue doctoral studies at the Department of Electronic
Systems and Engineering at IISc. Along with his studies and his work at Wipro, he successfully
initiated a successful research consortium between Wipro, Boeing, IISc and HCL.

From my personal knowledge, he has worked on areas such as robotics, document image
processing, human-computer interaction and cognitive systems and networks., His work has
received a lot of media mention and he also gave a TEDIndia talk in 2009. Currently, he has put
his energy on building an autonomous car.

I highly recommend Dr. Ramachandra Budihal for elevation as “Fellow of Technical Staff" under
the Wipro’s DMTS program, which he richly deserves.

Prof. A G Ramakrishnan,
Professor and Chairman,
Department of Electrical Engineering,
Indian Institute of Science

Rama is very passionate in technology, is a thought leader and a lateral thinker. He

demonstrated these very same outstanding qualities for the WiPod initiative. He recently
completed his PhD on cognitive radio and that is a great example of his pursuit of excellence.
The Digital Hampi project and his TED talk on the same, which I attended personally, has been
widely acclaimed by academics, government and the industry.

I recommend Rama for Fellow and wish him the very best.

N S Bala
President, MNT SBU,
Wipro Ltd.

I met Rama when I was curating TEDIndia in 2009. I was really impressed with his technical
knowledge and dedication to work. He wanted to push the envelop of technology even then
and created a Virtual Reality demo of showcasing the temple in Hampi in its true glory by
taking us back in time. His ideas in using technology to preserve the cultural heritage of India
was a great way to demonstrate the true value of technology as a tool for larger purpose. He is
very focused, talented and will always strive to be at the forefront of technology.

Lakshmi Pratury
Curetor of TED India conference
Founder, Curetor of INK conference

A special note from my team

Embedded systems and System integration team of Wipod
We got introduced to Rama as “System Consultant” for autonomous vehicle project. We had
pleasure to work under Rama in autonomous vehicle project. During first meeting itself we got
inspired and taken this challenging project under his Leadership. Initially we were not clear on
Eco-system/environment as it involves various disciplines. However, he has guided us and
shown how a complicated system like Autonomous car can be built in aggressive timeline.
Another unique quality of Rama is his multidisciplinary skillset. He is equally at ease in talking
about Electronics, Electrical, Mechanical, Robotics or Advanced Topics in Computer Science like
AI or Cognitive Computing. This makes him an indispensable leader for any project like
Autonomous Vehicle which spans across multiple disciplines. His strong knowledge of
Mechanical Design and Manufacturing also helped in interacting with the Vendor effectively and
solve many issues during manufacturing and assembly of Wipro Autonomous Vehicle (Wipod).
His willingness to take risk and take up projects with difficult timelines is another unique quality
which we have seen during Autonomous Vehicle project. Rama stands up for his team when
need to be. His dedication and never-say-die attitude to achieve any target is one of his
greatest quality. He has very good clarity in his thought process and clear articulation. His
strategic plan and action creates a vibe which encourage others to follow. He always keep
himself updated with latest technology and current trend of technology in the market. We got
opportunity to work under his leadership and that helped us to go over and above our
responsibilities to execute successfully. Rama is a very learned person. His treasures of
knowledge in leadership can enlighten an aspirant individual. We are grateful to his passionate
contribution and motivation for us throughout wipod program, which helped us to reopen the
blocked doors on many occasion. Rama is one of the most enthusiastic wiprotes and always
Innovating/ Inventing / Implementing new ideas/solutions. Very generous to knowledge sharing
he is always creating a possible attitude ambience. We wish him all the best for his dreams and
aspiration.

The CV team members of the “Autonomous vehicle” project welcome this

opportunity to share our experiences of working with Dr. Ramachandra Budihal.

All our team members have known Rama (so he is addressed by all of us) while working for the
“Autonomous Vehicle” project over the past one year. Through several occasions, each of us
have observed Rama demonstrating his proactiveness and goal-orientation on the professional
front. Also, as we work through this highly complex project, we have encountered several
challenges and Rama is the one to find a way out for each of this, with his deep knowledge as
well as practical application skills. Rama puts in hard work to equip himself to meet such
challenges through perseverance and patience. He is seen to be very well-informed on the
latest technological trends and provides a valuable perspective when we try to solve different
problems of our complex project. His in-depth reviews on design, implementation as well as
documentation for our project provides a valuable insight and are extremely useful.
Interactions with Rama has given us a glimpse of his rich professional experience which spans
across products, services, multiple roles and functions of the industry. As the chief architect and
mentor for our entire team, we have seen Rama very supportive to all the team members in
multiple ways. He exhibits a genuine passion towards coaching and mentoring the team
members. He has been very proactive in involving all team members through variety of every-
day exercises which promotes better communication, innovation, design thinking and helps
sharing of ideas/state-of-the-art information. He takes genuine interest in helping each team
member develop professionally, to the best of his/her capability. He encourages transparency
and communication across team members to freely express their thoughts and ideas. In
addition to the work-related aspects, Rama exhibits genuine effort and interest towards
developing each team member as a better human being. He is always oriented to help the
team to be more productive. We admire his creative ideas and passion towards making
technology more useful to the mankind. As a person, we have seen that Rama is self-driven
and is very independent in his work. He is perseverant and his attention to detail is noteworthy.
Rama can connect to a diverse audience and convey a message effectively. His ability to
remain focused during arguments is remarkable. In addition, he has keen interest in solving a
problem at hand and is ready to experiment anytime without fear of failure.