Navneet Bhalla

Cornell University, Harvard University, University of Calgary, University College London

Papers

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About

Navneet Bhalla is a leading researcher in autonomous multi-robot construction systems, with a primary focus on decentralized coordination and self-assembly in unknown environments. His most influential work, "SRoCS: Leveraging Stigmergy on a Multi-robot Construction Platform for Unknown Environments" (30 citations), introduced a groundbreaking approach that enables robot teams to build structures without centralized control or pre-existing maps by using environmental cues—a concept known as stigmergy. This work fundamentally shifted how researchers approach construction in unstructured settings. Bhalla further advanced the field with his study "Structure and markings as stimuli for autonomous construction" (13 citations), which demonstrated how partially-built structures themselves can serve as dynamic stimuli to guide robot behavior, creating an elegant feedback loop between construction and coordination. His early contributions to "Working Towards Self-Assembling Robots at all Scales" (11 citations) explored how principles from natural self-assembly—from molecular to galactic scales—can inspire robotic systems. Bhalla also developed simulation frameworks in ARGoS (10 citations) that allow researchers to model and test multi-robot construction algorithms efficiently. His work bridges biological inspiration and practical robotics, offering scalable solutions for autonomous construction in disaster response, space exploration, and infrastructure development.