Senthil Hariharan Arul

Ph.D. Candidate at University of Maryland College Park
Robotics | Motion Planning | Planning under Uncertainty | Reinforcement Learning

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Email: sarul1@umd.edu

Curriculum Vitae

I am a Ph.D. candidate in Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Maryland, College Park, specializing in multi-agent navigation within complex environments under the guidance of Prof. Dinesh Manocha. My research integrates robotics, motion planning, and reinforcement learning to advance AI technology. Specifically, I specialize in cooperative navigation and motion planning under uncertainty, exploring innovative solutions for real-world applications. In addition, I completed two internships at Amazon Lab126, specifically with the Consumer Robotics group. Currently, I am interning with Honda Research Institute (HRI) for Spring 2025, where I am working on interactive motion planning and decision-making in the context of autonomous vehicles.

I hold a bachelor’s degree in Instrumentation and Control Engineering from the National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirappalli. I interned for a summer at McMaster University, Canada, with Prof. Gray Bone, where I was involved in the development of an autonomous collaborative robotic arm. I am proficient in C++, Python, and TensorFlow, with a strong publication record in
top-tier robotics and AI conferences.


news

Mar 17, 2025 Delivered a guest lecture in the graduate course CS 6501: Multi-Robot Navigation at the University of Virginia, presenting my research on multi-robot navigation using MPC and reinforcement learning-based approaches.
Feb 10, 2025 This spring, I am working as a Research Intern at Honda Research Institute (HRI), San Jose, focusing on Behavior Modeling and Interactive Planning for Autonomous Vehicles.
Nov 06, 2024 Delivered a talk at Amazon Lab126’s Consumer Robotics Student Summit titled “Navigating the Everyday: Improving Robot Mobility in Household Scenarios.”
Oct 17, 2024 Two papers accepted at IROS 2024: “VLPG-Nav: Object Navigation Using Visual Language Pose Graph and Object Localization Probability Maps” and “When, What, and with Whom to Communicate: Enhancing RL-based Multi-Robot Navigation through Selective Communication.”
May 31, 2023 Spending the summer as an Applied scientist intern at Amazon Lab126, Sunnyvale working on Reliable Object Goal Navigation in household scenes.
Apr 15, 2023 Delivered a talk at the FLAIR Talk Series, University of Oxford, on “Decentralized Multi-Agent Navigation in Complex Scenarios.”
May 24, 2022 Spending the summer as an Applied scientist intern at Amazon Lab126, Sunnyvale working on Navigation under Uncertainty in Constrained Environments.