Roboticist with an MBA

Harsh Bharat
Kakashaniya

Think like a proton. Always positive.

Harsh Kakashaniya

About Me

I am a master's student pursuing my Masters in Robotics from the University of Maryland at College Park. Completed my bachelor's degree from MIT College of Engineering, Pune (2016) in Mechanical Engineering.

Graduate student with extensive hands-on practical experience and interest in Robotics Systems development, SLAM, robotics motion planning, and controls. Passionate about technologies having real-world, large-scale impact on society and proficient at conducting research. Along with technical know-how, possessing stellar communication, problem-solving and analytical skills.

Work Experience

My professional journey in robotics and engineering

Present Current Role
Sr. Manager, Robotics Software Engineering
🏢 ARCBEST Technologies — Fort Smith, AR
  • Leading the Robotics Software Engineering team, driving architecture, strategy, and delivery of autonomous warehouse robotics systems at scale.
  • Responsible for team growth, technical roadmap, and cross-functional collaboration across hardware, product, and operations.
  • Overseeing development of multi-agent planning, perception, and autonomous navigation stacks for production deployment.
May 2019 – Present
Robotics Engineer
🤖 ARCBEST Technologies — Fort Smith, AR
  • Successfully designed pipeline for simultaneous motion of robot with dynamic collision avoidance in a warehouse environment.
  • Implemented and tested bidirectional path planning algorithms on vehicle with differential constraints for dynamic environments.
  • Designed and tested algorithm for orientation estimation using camera for robot attachment (position estimation via computer vision).
  • Worked on localization in known environments using Aruco Tags and odometry using Kalman filter.
Sep 2018 – Apr 2019
Research Assistant
🔬 Maryland Robotics Center — College Park, MD
  • Design and implementation of autonomous Hydroponic system (cultivation without substrate) with monitoring of plant health and yield.
  • Developed cultivation module using Robotic End Effectors.
Jul 2016 – Aug 2018
Design Engineer
⚙️ ACG Worldwide — India
  • Developed "Robotic Pick-and-Place" (3D SCARA of RRP type) — the first company in India to have a robotic transfer system, showcased at P-Mech Exhibition 2018.
  • Launched a Special Biscuit transfer attachment for packing 110 biscuits per minute, opening a new FMCG business avenue for ACG.
  • Led Value Addition and Value Engineering in the Design department, causing significant reduction in overall costs.
  • Improved output efficiency by 15%, yielding a record-breaking total number of machines produced in Sep 2016.

Soft_Illusion

Interested in Robotics and Simulation and wish to make a difference? Then you are probably at the right place. Soft_Illusion is a YouTube channel that aims to help the robotics community with easy-to-learn tutorials on the Webots robot simulator — from basic installation to advanced applications.

755K+ Total Views
4.5K+ Subscribers
Visit Channel

Skills

Tools, languages, and frameworks I work with

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