Arun Narenthiran Sivakumar

I am a PhD candidate in Computer Science at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), advised by Prof. Girish Chowdhary. My work focuses on learning-based visual navigation in cluttered and unstructured agricultural environments. My research interests lie at the intersection of robot perception, robot learning, and field robotics.

Broadly, I am interested in developing AI-based robotic systems for reliable operation in field environments, with applications in precision agriculture, environmental monitoring, construction, and search and rescue. Outside of research, I enjoy travelling, and perfecting my biryani recipes.

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Learning-Based Visual Navigation: Field Deployment

Conference Publications

	Demonstrating CropFollow++: Under-Canopy Agricultural Navigation with Keypoints Arun Narenthiran Sivakumar, Mateus V Gasparino, Michael McGuire, Vitor AH Higuti, M Ugur Akcal, Girish Chowdhary Proceedings of Robotics: Science and Systems (RSS) 2024 Outstanding Demo Paper Award Finalist webpage
	WayFASTER: a Self-Supervised Traversability Prediction for Increased Navigation Awareness Mateus V Gasparino, Arun Narenthiran Sivakumar, Girish Chowdhary IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2024 arXiv
	CropNav: a Framework for Autonomous Navigation in Real Farms Mateus V Gasparino, Vitor AH Higuti, Arun Narenthiran Sivakumar, Andres EB Velasquez, Marcelo Becker, Girish Chowdhary IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2023
	ApproxCaliper: A Programmable Framework for Application-aware Neural Network Optimization Yifan Zhao, Hashim Sharif, Peter Pao-Huang, Vatsin Shah, Arun Narenthiran Sivakumar, Mateus Valverde Gasparino, Abdulrahman Mahmoud, Nathan Zhao, Sarita Adve, Girish Chowdhary, Sasa Misailovic, Vikram Adve Proceedings of Machine Learning and Systems (MLSys) 2023
	Learned Visual Navigation for Under-Canopy Agricultural Robots Arun Narenthiran Sivakumar, Sahil Modi, Mateus Valverde Gasparino, Che Ellis, Andres Eduardo Baquero Velasquez, Girish Chowdhary, Saurabh Gupta Proceedings of Robotics: Science and Systems (RSS) 2021 webpage / arXiv

Workshop Publications

	AdaCropFollow: Self-Supervised Online Adaptation for Visual Under-Canopy Navigation Arun Narenthiran Sivakumar, Federico Magistri, Mateus V Gasparino, Jens Behley, Cyrill Stachniss, Girish Chowdhary IROS 2024 Workshop on Robotics & AI for Future Farming Best Paper Award - Second Place
	Learning to Turn: Diffusion Imitation for Robust Row Turning in Under-Canopy Robots Arun Narenthiran Sivakumar, Pranay Thangeda, Yixiao Fang, Mateus V Gasparino, Jose Cuaran, Melkior Ornik, Girish Chowdhary Extended Abstract in IEEE ICRA@40
	CropFollowRL: Learning Under-Canopy Navigation Policy with Keypoints Abstraction Arun Narenthiran Sivakumar, Ning Wang, Felipe Tommaselli, Mateus V Gasparino, Marcelo Becker, Girish Chowdhary RSS 2024 Workshop on Navigation & Mobile Manipulation in Challenging and Cluttered Natural Environments
	PlantTrack: Task-Driven Plant Keypoint Tracking with Zero-Shot Sim2Real Transfer Samhita Marri, Arun Narenthiran Sivakumar, Naveen K. Uppalapati, Girish Chowdhary RSS 2024 Workshop on Navigation & Mobile Manipulation in Challenging and Cluttered Natural Environments

Journal Publications

	W-RIZZ: A Weakly-Supervised Framework for Relative Traversability Estimation in Mobile Robotics Andre Schreiber, Arun Narenthiran Sivakumar, Peter Du, Mateus V Gasparino, Girish Chowdhary, Katherine Driggs-Campbell IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L) 2024
	Under-canopy dataset for advancing simultaneous localization and mapping in agricultural robotics Jose Cuaran, Andres Eduardo Baquero Velasquez, Mateus Valverde Gasparino, Naveen Kumar Uppalapati, Arun Narenthiran Sivakumar, Justin Wasserman, Muhammad Huzaifa, Sarita Adve, Girish Chowdhary The International Journal of Robotics Research (IJRR) 2023 dataset
	NDVI/NDRE prediction from standard RGB aerial imagery using deep learning Corey Davidson, Vishnu Jaganathan, Arun Narenthiran Sivakumar, Joby M Prince Czarnecki, Girish Chowdhary Computers and Electronics in Agriculture 2022
	WayFAST: Navigation With Predictive Traversability in the Field Mateus V Gasparino, Arun Narenthiran Sivakumar, Yixiao Liu, Andres EB Velasquez, Vitor AH Higuti, John Rogers, Huy Tran, Girish Chowdhary IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L) 2022
	Proactive Anomaly Detection for Robot Navigation With Multi-Sensor Fusion Tianchen Ji, Arun Narenthiran Sivakumar, Girish Chowdhary, Katherine Driggs-Campbell IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L) 2022
	Multi-sensor fusion based robust row following for compact agricultural robots Andres Eduardo Baquero Velasquez, Vitor Akihiro Hisano Higuti, Mateus Valverde Gasparino, Arun Narenthiran Sivakumar, Marcelo Becker, Girish Chowdhary Field Robotics Journal 2022 arXiv
	Maize tassel detection from UAV imagery using deep learning Aziza Alzadjali, Mohammed H Alali, Arun Narenthiran Sivakumar, Jitender S Deogun, Stephen Scott, James C Schnable, Yeyin Shi Frontiers in Robotics and AI 2021
	Improved crop row detection with deep neural network for early-season maize stand count in UAV imagery Yan Pang, Yeyin Shi, Shancheng Gao, Feng Jiang, Arun Narenthiran Sivakumar, Laura Thompson, Joe Luck, Chao Liu Computers and Electronics in Agriculture 2020
	Comparison of Object Detection and Patch-Based Classification Deep Learning Models on Mid-to Late-Season Weed Detection in UAV Imagery Arun Narenthiran Sivakumar, Jiating Li, Stephen Scott, Eric Psota, Amit J Jhala, Joe D Luck, Yeyin Shi Remote Sensing 2020
	Principal variable selection to explain grain yield variation in winter wheat from features extracted from UAV imagery Jiating Li, Arun Narenthiran Sivakumar, Madhav Bhatta, Nicholas D Garst, Hannah Stoll, P Stephen Baenziger, Vikas Belamkar, Reka Howard, Yufeng Ge, Yeyin Shi Plant Methods 2019
	Elucidating sorghum biomass, nitrogen and chlorophyll contents with spectral and morphological traits derived from unmanned aircraft system Jiating Li, Yeyin Shi, Arun Narenthiran Sivakumar, Daniel P Schachtman Frontiers in Plant Science 2018

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