Publications

Millard, A., Ravikanna, R., Groß, R., & Chesmore, D. (2019) Towards a Swarm Robotic System for Autonomous Cereal Harvesting. In: Althoefer, K., Konstantinova, J., Zhang, K. (eds) Towards Autonomous Robotic Systems. TAROS 2019. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 11650. Springer, Cham. [July 2019].

Ravikanna, R., Hanheide, M., & Gautham, D., and Zhu, Z. (2021) ‘Maximising availability of transportation robots through intelligent allocation of parking spaces‘, Towards Autonomous Robotic Systems Annual Conference 2021. [October 2021].

Ravikanna, R., Millard, A. (2021) ‘Task Allocation with Manipulative Dynamic Auctioneering for Multi Robot Systems‘, UKRAS2021 Conference ‘Robotics at home’ Proceedings. [September 2021].

Ravikanna, R., Heselden, J., Arshad Khan, M., Perrett, A., Zhu, Z., Das, G. Hanheide, M. (2023) Smart Parking System Using Heuristic Optimization for Autonomous Transportation Robots in Agriculture. Towards Autonomous Robotic Systems. TAROS 2023: Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 14136, pp. 38-50. Springer, Cham. [September 2023].

Ravikanna, R., Cox, J., Heselden, J., Lloyd, R., Elias, A., & Hanheide, M. (2025) An Exploratory Study on the Use of Robot Dogs in Shepherding. HRI ’25: Proceedings of the 2025 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, pp. 1820-1822. [March 2025].

Presentations

“Task Allocation in Multi Robot Systems using Dynamic Manipulative Bidding Strategy” (oral) – Lincoln Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems 2020 [October 2020] – Online.

“Fleet Management of Autonomous Agricultural Robots with Human Awareness” (oral) – AgriFoRwArdS CDT Quarterly PhD Research Progress Meeting [January 2021] – Online.

“Fleet Management of Autonomous Agricultural Robots with Human Awareness” (oral) – AgriFoRwArdS CDT Quarterly PhD Research Progress Meeting [April 2021] – Online.

“The perks in studying robotics” (oral) – University of Lincoln’s International Women in Engineering Day Showcase 2021 [June 2021] – Online.

“Automated Counting of Grapes” (oral) – AgriFoRwArdS CDT Summer School 2021 [June 2021] – Online.

“Task Allocation with Manipulative Dynamic Auctioneering for Multi Robot Systems” (oral) – UKRAS21 Conference: “Robotics at Home” [June 2021] – Online.

“Allocation of Parking Spaces for Autonomous Agricultural Robots” (oral) – AgriFoRwArdS CDT Annual Conference 2021 [July 2021] – Online.

“Maximising availability of fruit transportation robots through intelligent allocation of parking spaces” (oral) – Festival of Fresh 2021 [July 2021] – Online.

“Maximising availability of transportation robots through intelligent allocation of parking spaces” (poster) – Towards Autonomous Robotic Systems (TAROS) Annual Conference 2021 [September 2021] – Online.

“Maximising availability of transportation robots through intelligent allocation of parking spaces” (oral) – Joint Robotics and Autonomous Systems CDT Conference 2021 [October 2021] – Online.

“Fleet Management of Autonomous Agricultural Robots with Human Awareness” (oral) – AgriFoRwArdS CDT Quarterly PhD Research Progress Meeting [May 2022] – Online.

“The Way We Eat” (oral) – TEDx Brayford Pool Salon [July 2022] – Lincoln, UK.

“With machine learning, data fusion and an understanding of the marine environment to guide fishers to the best catch” (oral) – AgriFoRwArdS CDT Summer School 2022 [July 2022] – Norwich, UK.

“Farm robots, fruit-picking and human-robot interaction” (oral) – UKRAS Robot Talk Podcast [September 2022] – Online.

“Does Baxter Dream of Electric Beans?” (oral) – AgriFoRwArdS CDT Summer School 2023 [March 2023] – Lincoln, UK.

“Smart Parking System Using Heuristic Optimization For Autonomous Transportation Robots In Agriculture” (oral) – Towards Autonomous Robotic Systems (TAROS) 2023 / AgriFoRwArdS CDT Annual Conference 2023 / Joint Robotics CDT Annual Conference 2023 [September 2023] – Cambridge, UK.

“Smart Parking System Using Heuristic Optimization For Autonomous Transportation Robots In Agriculture” (poster) – Towards Autonomous Robotic Systems (TAROS) 2023 / AgriFoRwArdS CDT Annual Conference 2023 / Joint Robotics CDT Annual Conference 2023 [September 2023] – Cambridge, UK.

“Fleet Management of Autonomous Agricultural Robots with Human Awareness” (oral) – Lincoln Centre for Autonomous Systems (L-CAS) General Meeting [October 2023] – Lincoln, UK.

“An Exploratory Study on the Use of Robot Dogs in Shepherding” (video submission) – ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI25) [March 2025] – Online.

“Flockonomics” (oral) – AgriFoRwArdS CDT Summer School 2025: Going to the Dogs! [June 2025] – Lincoln, UK.

Other Activities

• Author of AgriFoRwArdS CDT news article celebrating International Women’s Day 2021 [March 2021].
• Discussion Panel member at the AgriFoRwArdS CDT Annual Conference 2021 – Discusion topic: Jeff Keiser’s keynote talk “30+ Years of AgriTech… What have we learned? …and, how do we apply that for the Future?” [July 2021].
• Represented the AgriFoRwArdS CDT on the University of Lincoln stand at the Fresh Produce Consortium Festivals Event 2021 – showcasing research to the public, prospective students, and industry collaborators [November 2021].
• Represented the AgriFoRwArdS CDT in the AgriFoRwArdS CDT promotional video, including interview about experiences within the CDT and the agri-food robotics sector [November 2021].
• Discussion Panel member for the AgriFoRwArdS Seminar Series – Discussion topic: Dr Ayse Kuckyilmaz’s talk “Dynamic Role Allocation and Shared Control in Human-Robot Collaborative Teamwork” [March 2022].
• Represented the AgriFoRwArdS CDT at the University of Lincoln British Science Week Showcase – showcasing research and robotic demonstrations to school age children [March 2022].
• Represented the AgriFoRwArdS CDT at the University of Lincoln Showcase for the Boston College Institute of Technology – showcasing research and robotics demonstrations [June 2022].
• UK RAS RoboLab Live demonstration (University of Lincoln submission) for the UKRAS festival of robotics 2022 – Demonstration of robotics systems in strawberry polytunnel for two applications [June 2022].
• Discussion Panel member at the AgriFoRwArdS CDT Annual Conference 2022 – Discussion topic: AgriFoRwArdS PhD research progress [June 2022].
• Contributor to AgriFoRwArdS CDT news article ‘TEDx @ Riseholme‘ [July 2022].
• Member of the AgriFoRwArdS CDT Drink Outside the Box Organisation Committee [October 2022 to September 2022].
• Winner of the ‘Most Novel and Scalable Solution’ award at the AgriFoRwArdS CDT Summer School 2023 [March 2023].
• Discussion Panel at the AgriFoRwArdS CDT Quarterly PhD Research Progress Meeting & new student welcome – Discussion topic: Interview with fellow students; about you, your research, & the PhD experience [September 2023].
• Winner of the ‘Best Application’ Award at the Towards Autonomous Robotic Systems (TAROS) Conference 2023, with her presentation titled ‘Smart Parking System Using Heuristic Optimization For Autonomous Transportation Robots In Agriculture’ [September 2023].
• Discussion Panel member at the AgriFoRwArdS CDT Annual Conference 2025 – Discussion topic: Transferring Research Into Real Life Applications [May 2025].
• Member of the AgriFoRwArdS CDT Summer School 2025 Organisation Committee [May & June 2025].
• Group lead for the Flockonomics team at the AgriFoRwArdS CDT Summer School 2025 [June 2025].
• Additional project work: Real-World Implementation and Economic Study on the Use of Robot Dogs in Shepherding [February to July 2025].

MSc Project

Leaky Integrate Neuron Model for Multi Robot Task Allocation

The evolution of methodologies in Multi Robot Task Allocation is surveyed. Various classifications of Taxonomy in the domain is compared to the relevance of its application. An idea for a novel ‘Leaky Integrate and Fire’ Neuron Model for Multi Robot Task Allocation is presented along with the explanation of its biological theory. This is used as an inspiration to model a setup of heterogenous autonomous Multi Robot system in a farmland environment. The model would be simulated as a software using Python. Performance of the system will be evaluated and compared to that of a traditional Market based approach. Findings shall be drawn and Results are to be summarised.

PhD Project

Fleet Management of Autonomous Agricultural Robots with Human Awareness

Fleet management of autonomous agricultural robots is fundamental to fully autonomous farming practices as it addresses the issues of conflict resolution, resource and efficiency optimisation when dealing with a fleet of homogenous or heterogenous robots. The abstract of the proposal for this PhD would be integrating human behaviour models with the navigation and task allocation system of autonomous fleets for better path planning evading possible conflicts and deadlock situations between robot-robot and human-robot(s). The study will focus on the proxemics, human behaviour modelling using decision prediction and neuroscientific methods, path planning, fleet coordination and human robot ethics.

Roopika’s PhD project is being carried out in collaboration with Saga Robotics, and with primary supervision by Prof Marc Hanheide.