Publications

• Millard, A., Ravikanna, R., Groß, R., and Chesmore, D. (2019) ‘Towards a Swarm Robotic System for Autonomous Cereal Harvesting‘, 20th Annual Conference Towards Autonomous Robotic Systems (TAROS).
• 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.
• Ravikanna, R., Millard, A. (2021) ‘Task Allocation with Manipulative Dynamic Auctioneering for Multi Robot Systems‘, UKRAS2021 Conference ‘Robotics at home’ Proceedings.
• 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.

Presentations

• Lincoln Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems 2020 (October 2020): Task Allocation in Multi Robot Systems using Dynamic Manipulative Bidding Strategy.
• International Women in Engineering Day 2021 (June 2021): The perks in studying robotics – Watch here (talk starts at 58.00 minutes).
• UKRAS Conference 2021 (June 2021): Task Allocation using Manipulative Dynamic Auctioneer System.
• AgriFoRwArdS CDT Annual Conference 2021 (July 2021): Allocation of Parking Spaces for Autonomous Agricultural Robots.
• Festival of Fresh 2021 (July 2021): Maximising availability of fruit transportation robots through intelligent allocation of parking spaces.
• Joint Robotics and Autonomous Systems CDT Conference 2021 (October 2021): Maximising availability of transportation robots through intelligent allocation of parking spaces.
• TEDx Brayford Pool Salon (July 2022): The Way We Eat
• UKRAS Robot Talk podcast episode 19 (September 2022): Farm robots, fruit-picking and human-robot interaction.
• The Towards Autonomous Robots and Systems (TAROS) Conference 2023 / CDT Annual Conference / Joint Robotics CDT Conference (September 2023): Smart Parking System Using Heuristic Optimization For Autonomous Transportation Robots In Agriculture.

Posters

• Towards Autonomous Robotic Systems Annual Conference 2021 (September 2021): Maximising availability of transportation robots through intelligent allocation of parking spaces.
• The Towards Autonomous Robots and Systems (TAROS) Conference 2023 / CDT Annual Conference / Joint Robotics CDT Conference (September 2023): Smart Parking System Using Heuristic Optimization For Autonomous Transportation Robots In Agriculture.

Other Activities

• Member of the AgriFoRwArdS CDT Drink Outside the Box Organisation Committee.
• Took part in the AgriFoRwArdS Summer School 2021 resulting in co-authored presentation at the AgriFoRwArdS CDT Annual Conference 2021: Automated Counting of Grapes (in collaboration with Laurence Roberts-Elliot, William Osmond, Clement Aardweg, Bradley Hurst).
• Member of the discussion panel for Jeff Keiser’s Keynote presentation at the AgriFoRwArdS CDT Annual Conference 2021, ‘30+ Years of AgriTech… What have we learned? …and, how do we apply that for the Future?’.
• Represented the CDT at the the Fresh Produce Consortium festival event in 2021.
• Panel member for the March 2022 AgriFoRwArdS Seminar Series with Ayse Kucukyilmaz, watch here.
• Represented the CDT at the school outreach University of Lincoln British Science Week event 2022.
• Member of AgriFoRwArdS CDT Annual Conference 2022 discussion panel.
• UKRAS Robot Lab Live 2022 demonstration

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.