Harshit Khurana

Walt Disney (Switzerland), École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne

Papers

Total Citations

H-Index

About

Harshit Khurana is a roboticist whose work sits at the intersection of aerial manipulation, impact-aware control, and human-robot interaction. His most recognized contribution is **PaintCopter**, an autonomous UAV capable of spray-painting complex 3D surfaces; his 2019 paper introducing a virtual reality interface for this system has garnered **32 citations**, making it his most influential work to date. Khurana has also advanced the field of **impact-aware manipulation**, proposing a novel metric called "hitting flux" to enable robots to strike objects with precision—a capability that allows a manipulator to place objects beyond its physical workspace. His 2021 paper on learning the dynamics of hit objects (16 citations) and his 2023 work on motion planning for impact-aware tasks (9 citations) demonstrate a sustained focus on non-prehensile manipulation. More recently, he has developed a stable adaptive extended Kalman filter for estimating robot link velocities and accelerations, combining IMU data with motor encoders for lightweight, versatile state estimation. Khurana’s research is notable for blending theoretical rigor with practical, real-world applications—from artistic aerial painting to dynamic object positioning—making him a rising figure in modern robotics.