Hi / Vanakkam / Salut, I am Hari.

I am a second-year PhD student at LAAS-CNRS, Toulouse, France.

My research focuses on socially aware robot navigation, improving how robots move and interact naturally and legibly around dynamic humans for better Human-Robot Interaction, under the supervision of Dr. Rachid Alami.

Email : harunachal@laas.fr

This site gives an overview of my research, projects, and professional journey.

If your research or projects align with mine, I would be happy to connect and explore potential collaborations.

Last Updated : Jan 2026

[Linkedin]

[Github]

[Telegram]

[Scholar]

Research and Software

Research :

A Retrieval Augmented Generation Approach for Planning on General Purpose Service Robots - ARTIIS 2025 [paper] [code]
- Eden Attenborough, Hariharan Arunachalam, Juan Pablo Vásconez, Francesco Del Duchetto, Riccardo Polvara, Leonardo Guevara
Assessing Human Cooperation for Enhancing Social Robot Navigation - ICRA Workshop 2025 - Advances in Social Navigation - Poster Presentation [paper] [poster]
- Hariharan Arunachalam, Phani Teja Singamaneni, Rachid Alami
Resilient Timed Elastic Band Planner for Collision-Free Navigation in Unknown Environments - Journal of Field Robotics 2025 [paper]
- Geesara Kulathunga, Abdurrahman Yilmaz, Zhuoling Huang, Ibrahim Hroob, Hariharan Arunachalam, Leonardo Guevara, Alexandr Klimchik, Grzegorz Cielniak, Marc Hanheide
Runtime Anomaly Monitoring of Human Perception Models for Robotic Systems - IEEE CASE 2024 [paper] [code]
- Hariharan Arunachalam, Zhuoling Huang, Marc hanheide, Leonardo Guevara
Robot-assisted fruit harvesting: an ergonomics user study - IEEE CASE 2024 [paper]
- Leonardo Guevara, Prabuddhi Wariyapperuma, Hariharan Arunachalam, Juan Vasconez, Marc Hanheide, Elizabeth Sklar
Learning Manipulation Tasks in Dynamic and Shared 3D Spaces - Arxiv [paper] [code]
- Hariharan Arunachalam, Sariah Mghames, Marc Hanheide

Education

Education :

PhD (Computer Science and Robotics) - CNRS, France (2024 - Present)
MSc by Research (Computer Science) - University of Lincoln (2023 - 2024) [Link to Thesis]
B.Tech (Hons.) (Mechatronics Engineering) - SASTRA University (2018 - 2022) [Link to Thesis]

Scholarships and Honors :

I am extremely grateful for all the scholarships throughout my journey

Marie Skłodowska-Curie Doctoral Fellowship - (2024 - Present)
- Fellowship support during my PhD studies at CNRS
University of Lincoln Studentship - (2023 - 2024)
- Funded MSc scholarship at University of Lincoln (Thanks to the sponsor - Berry Garden Growers Ltd)
Desh-Videsh Scholarship (2022)
- Funded research exchange program from SASTRA University for research internship at University of Lincoln
Dean's Merit List - 10% (2019, 2020)
- Awarded to top 10% performing students at SASTRA University

Experience

Experience :

Visiting PhD Student - Cognitive Robotics Lab, University of Manchester, UK (2025)
Visiting Research Student - Honda Research Institute, Offenbach am main, Germany (Feb 2025 - Mar2025)
Research Assistant (Part-time) - L-CAS, University of Lincoln, Lincoln, UK(June 2023 - May 2024)
Data Scientist 1 - Augur Ai Pvt Ltd, Trichy, India (Aug 2022 - Feb 2023)
Research Intern (Part-time) - L-CAS, University of Lincoln, Lincoln, UK (June 2021 - June 2022)
Winter Research Intern (Part-time) - CIR, Indian Institute of Information Technology, Allahabad, India (Nov 2020 - Jan 2021)
AI Developer Intern (Part-time) - WiselyWise Pvt Ltd, India (Oct 2020 - Dec 2020)

Competitions :

LeRobot Hackathon 2024 - Toulouse, France
RoboCup@Home 2024 - Eindhoven, Netherlands (9th out of 18 teams) - Team Leader [paper]
RoboCup@Home 2023 - Bordeaux, France (11th out of 15 teams) - Technical Team Member [paper]

Public Engagements :

Fête de la science (Oct 2025) - LAAS-CNRS - Science demos for young students
Open day volunteer (2023 - 2024) - Uni. of Lincoln - Robot demos for incoming students
Lincolnshire Show 2023 (June 2023) - Lincoln, England, Uk - Represented Uni. of Lincoln
Social Volunteer (2019) - Dr.Abdul kalam Welfare Trust, India - Volunteered with an NGO for Social Causes

Summer Schools :

UPC Robotics & AI Summer School (2022) - Participant

Google Sites

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