Dr.Krishan Rana

About Me

Image

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 [email protected].

Publications

  1.   Image Rana, K., Lee, R., Pershouse, D., & Sünderhauf, N. “IMLE Policy: Fast and Sample Efficient Visuomotor Policy Learning via Implicit Maximum Likelihood Estimation” 2025 Robotics: Science and Systems(RSS)
    [Paper] [Site]

  2.   Image Abou-Chakra, J., Sun, L., Rana, K., May, B., Schmeckpeper, K., Mnniti, M., Herlant, L., & Sünderhauf, N. “Real-is-Sim: Bridging the Sim-to-Real Gap with a Dynamic Digital Twin for Real-World Robot Policy Evaluation” [under review - CoRL 2025])
    [Paper] [Site]

  3.   Image 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]

  4.   Image Abou-Chakra, J., Rana, K., Dayoub, F., & Sünderhauf, N. “Physically Embodied Gaussian Splatting: A Realtime Correctable World Model for Robotics” 2024 Conference on Robot Learning (CoRL)
    [Paper] [Site]

  5.   Image 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]

  6.   Image 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]

  7.   Image 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]

  8.   Image 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]

  9.   Image 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]

  10.   Image 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]

  11.   Image 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]

  12.   Image 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]

  13.   Image 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]

  14.   Image 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]

  15.   Image 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]

  16.   Image 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 [Site]
  2. Behaviour Priors in Reinforcement Learning for Robotics Workshop - International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2022 [Site]
  3. Semantics for Robotics - Robotics: Science and Systems (RSS) 2024 [Site]
  4. Semantics for Robotics - Robotics: Science and Systems (RSS) 2025 [Site]
  5. Workshop on Lifelong Learning for Home Robots - Conference on Robot Learning (CoRL) 2024 [Site]

Invited Talks

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

Teaching

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