About Me

Hi! I am a postdoctoral researcher at the QUT Centre for Robotics working on robot learning which lies at the intersection of AI and robotics with a focus on teaching robots to intelligently plan and interact with the world in order to solve everyday tasks. Feel free to contact me via ranak@qut.edu.au.

Publications

1.   Rana, K., Abou-Chakra, J., Garg, S., Lee, R., Reid, I., & Sünderhauf, N. “Affordance-Centric Policy Decomposition : Generalisable and Sample Efficient Robot Policy Learning for Multi-Object, Long-Horizon Manipulation” [under review])
   [Paper] [Site]

2.   Abou-Chakra, J., Rana, K., Dayoub, F., & Sünderhauf, N. “Physically Embodied Gaussian Splatting: A Realtime Correctable World Model for Robotics” [under review]
   [Paper] [Site]

3.   Open X-Embodiment Collaboration “Open X-Embodiment: Robotic Learning Datasets and RT-X Models” 2024 International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) (Best Conference Paper | Best Manipulation Paper Finalist | Best Student Paper Finalist)
   [Paper] [Site]

4.   Rana, K., Haviland, J., Garg, S., Abou-Chakra, J., Reid, I., & Sünderhauf, N. “SayPlan: Grounding Large Language Models using 3D Scene Graphs for Scalable Robot Task Planning” 2023 Conference on Robot Learning (CoRL)
   (Oral Presentation)
   [Paper] [Site]

5.   Garg, S., Rana, K., Hosseinzadeh, M., Mares, L., Sünderhauf, N., Dayoub, F., & Reid, I. “RoboHop: Segment-based Topological Map Representation for Open-World Visual Navigation” 2024 International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA)
   [Paper] [Site]

6.   Rana, K., Melnik, A., & Sünderhauf, N. “Contrastive Language, Action, and State Pre-training for Robot Learning” 2024 International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) Pretraining for Robotics Workshop
   [Paper]

7.   Rana, K., Milford, M., & Sünderhauf, N. “Residual Skill Policies: Learning an Adaptable Skill Space for Reinforcement Learning for Robotics” 2022 Conference on Robot Learning (CoRL)
   [Paper] [Code] [Site]

8.   Rana, K., Dasagi, V., Haviland, J., Milford, M., & Sünderhauf, N. “Zero-Shot Uncertainty-Aware Deployment of Simulation Trained Policies on Real-World Robots” NeurIPS 2021 Workshop on Deployable Decision Making in Embodied Systems (DDM) (Spotlight Presentation)
   [Paper] [Code] [Site]

9.   Rana, K., Dasagi, V., Haviland, J., Milford, M., & Sünderhauf, N. “Bayesian Controller Fusion: Leveraging Control Priors in Deep Reinforcement Learning for Robotics” The International Journal of Robotics Research (IJRR)
   [Paper] [Code] [Site]

10.   Rana, K., Dasagi, V., Talbot, B., Milford, M., & Sunderhauf, N. (2020). “Multiplicative Controller Fusion: Leveraging Algorithmic Priors for Sample-efficient Reinforcement Learning and Safe Sim-To-Real Transfer”. 2020 International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS)
    [Paper] [Code] [Site]

11.   Rana, K., Talbot, B., Milford, M., & Sünderhauf, N. (2020). “Residual Reactive Navigation: Combining Classical and Learned Navigation Strategies For Deployment in Unknown Environments”. 2020 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 11493-11499.
    [Paper] [Code] [Site]

12.   Melnik, A., Harter, A., Limberg, C., Rana, K., Sünderhauf, N., & Ritter, H. “Critic Guided Segmentation of Rewarding Objects in First Person Views”. German Conference of Artificial Intelligence, 2021.
    [Paper]

13.   Palmer, D.W., Coppin, T., Rana, K., Dansereau, D., Suheimat, M., Maynard, M., Atchison, D., Roberts, J., Crawford, R., & Jaiprakash, A. (2018). “Glare-free retinal imaging using a portable light field fundus camera”. Biomedical Optics Express, 9, 3178 - 3192.
    [Paper]

14.   Coppin, T., Palmer, D.W., Rana, K., Dansereau, D., Collins, M., Atchison, D., Roberts, J., Crawford, R., & Jaiprakash, A. (2021). “Design of a Focused Light Field Fundus Camera for Retinal Imaging”. [Under review for IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging (T-MI)]
    

Organised Workshops

1. Pretraining For Robotics Workshop - International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2024 [under review] [Site]
   
2. Behaviour Priors in Reinforcement Learning for Robotics Workshop - International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2022 [Site]
   

Invited Talks

• Scaling Robot Learning - CSIRO Data61
  
• Pretraining for Robot Learning - Australian Institue for Machine Learning (AIML)
  
• Grounding Large Language Models using 3D Scene Graphs for Scalable Robot Task Planning - QUT Centre for Robotics (Mid Year Retreat)
  
• Scaling Robot Learning - Technical University of Darmstadt
  
• Accelerating Reinforcement Learning - Center for Cognitive Interaction Technology, University of Bielefeld

Patents

1. Method and System for Generating a Robot Task Plan
   Patent Number au2023904229
   K. Rana, N. Suenderhauf

2. Ophthalmic Imaging Apparatus and System
   Patent Number au2017901153
   A. Jaiprakash, D. Palmer, D. G. Dansereau, T. Coppin, K. Rana, J. Roberts, R. Crawford

3. Method and System for Calibrating an Ophthalmic Imager
   Patent Number au2018900513
   D. Palmer, T. Coppin, K. Rana

Grants

• QCR Early Career Researcher Grant Award: Learning an Instance and View-Point Invariant Manipulation Skills Database for Service Robots 2022-2023
• UA-DAAD Australia-Germany Joint Research Cooperation Scheme Project: Sample-efficient learning for autonomous agents in complex hierarchical, and sparse environments 2020-2023

Teaching

• Lecturer: IFN680 Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (Masters Specialisation Unit) 2023
• Tutor: DXB211 Creative Coding 2020-2021

---

Click here if you'd like to collaborate :)