Hariharan Arunachalam

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About

Hariharan Arunachalam is a robotics researcher whose work bridges the critical gap between autonomous navigation and human-robot collaboration in dynamic, real-world environments. His primary research areas include motion planning, trajectory replanning, and human-robot interaction for agricultural and industrial applications. Arunachalam’s most impactful contribution is the development of the **Resilient Timed Elastic Band (RTEB) Planner**, a novel approach for collision-free navigation in unknown environments. This work, published in 2025 and already garnering 8 citations, addresses a fundamental challenge in autonomous systems: how to gracefully recover and replan when an initial trajectory becomes infeasible due to unexpected obstacles. By integrating trajectory refinement with control command generation, his method enhances the robustness of mobile robots operating in unstructured settings. Complementing this technical contribution, his 2024 study on **robot-assisted fruit harvesting** provides critical insights into the usability and ergonomic challenges of deploying mobile robots alongside human pickers. This work highlights the practical hurdles of shared workspaces, from safety to task coordination, offering a user-centered perspective often missing in purely algorithmic research. Through these contributions, Arunachalam is advancing both the theoretical foundations and practical deployment of resilient, human-aware robotic systems.