I am Varun Raveendra, a first-year PhD Student in Robotics at the University of Utah, where I am a part of the Aligned, Robust and Interactive Autonomy Lab (ARIA) advised by Prof. Daniel S Brown. My research focuses on embodied multi-agent systems, Reinforcement Learning for embodied intelligence, and swarm robots, with a broader interest in advancing AI for embodied robots.

I previously completed my Master’s Electrical Engineering at the University of Utah, also in robotics, under the guidance of Prof. Daniel S Drew. Before The U, I received my undergraduate degree in Electronics and Communication from NMIT, India. I’ve worked on a range of electronics and robotics projects, including an internship at Tevatron Technologies in Bangalore, India where I worked on STM microcontrollers and embedded systems.

These academic and industry experiences have shaped my background in robotics and motivated my transition from coursework to research-driven exploration. I’ve started publishing my research recently and have started to maintain a list of my publications under the Research section.

CV / Resume, Google Scholar
Email ID: varunraveendra@gmail.com

Updates

Jan 2026: A paper I co-authored R2BC: Multi-Agent Imitation Learning from Single-Agent Demonstrations was accepted at ICRA 2026!
Jun 2025: Presented my research on Swarm robots at the Inaugral Utah AI Summit.
May 2025: Presented at workshop ARMS 2025 at AAMAS 2025 on "Emergent Swarm Behavior Prediction using 1D-Convolution for Autonomous Closed-Loop Behavior Control". Won the MOASEI Competetion @ AAMAS25 on Open-agent systems!
Jan 2025: Started PhD program in Robotics, advised by Prof. Daniel S Brown continuing at The U.
Dec 2024: A paper I co-authored Discovery and Deployment of Emergent Robot Swarm Behaviors via Representation Learning and Real2Sim2Real Transfer was accepted at AAMAS 2025!
Jun 2024: Released new version of HeRo robots, HeRo+
May 2024: Graduated with M.S in ECE at The U.
Dec 2023: Started working on HeRo Robots and improving them for swarm research.
Jan 2023: Research from Undergrad was published, Waste managenment in urban localities: an IoT and machine learning solution.
Aug 2022: Started Master's in Electrical and Computer Science focusing on Robotics at The U.
Jul 2022: Graduated with B.S in ECE from NMIT Bangalore,India.
May 2022: Research on MEMS Sensors