PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Rahul Shome

Rahul Shome is a roboticist who builds planning algorithms that let robot arms and teams of robots carry out multi-step tasks, with research that reaches into human-robot interaction. In 2017, a multi-robot motion planning paper written with Kostas Bekris and others won Best Paper at the International Symposium on Multi-Robot and Multi-Agent Systems, and a Rutgers doctorate under Bekris followed in 2020. As a postdoctoral research associate and Rice Academy Fellow, they worked with Lydia Kavraki at Rice University, and the 2024 paper 'Task and Motion Planning for Execution in the Real' earned a King-Sun Fu Memorial Best Paper Award Honourable Mention in 2025. They are a Senior Lecturer in the School of Computing at the Australian National University, where they and Hanna Kurniawati lead a Google-supported research stream on AI-powered robotics.

Timeline

  1. 2014

    Pebble graphs for rearrangement

    In 2014, Shome coauthors 'Rearranging Similar Objects with a Manipulator using Pebble Graphs' for the IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots. The method computes manipulation paths that rearrange similar objects in a cluttered space.

  2. 2017

    Best paper at MRS 2017

    The International Symposium on Multi-Robot and Multi-Agent Systems gives its 2017 Best Paper award to Shome, Andrew Dobson, Kiril Solovey, Dan Halperin and Kostas E. Bekris for 'Scalable Asymptotically-Optimal Multi-Robot Motion Planning.' The paper proposes dRRT*, an informed, asymptotically-optimal planner for coupled multi-robot problems.

  3. 2018–2019

    Multi-arm planning with handoffs

    In 2018, Shome coauthors 'Fast and High-Quality Dual-Arm Rearrangement in Synchronous, Monotone Tabletop Setups' at the Workshop on the Algorithmic Foundations of Robotics, which develops an optimal MILP model for two-arm rearrangement. A 2019 paper with Kostas E. Bekris, 'Anytime Multi-arm Task and Motion Planning for Pick-and-Place of Individual Objects via Handoffs,' extends the dRRT* algorithm to a multi-modal setting.

  4. 2020

    Rutgers Ph.D. with Bekris

    At Rutgers University, they earn an M.S. and a Ph.D., finishing the Ph.D. in 2020 under Kostas E. Bekris. The dissertation, 'The Problem Of Many: Efficient Multi-arm, Multi-object Task And Motion Planning With Optimality Guarantees,' covers manipulating multiple objects with multiple robot manipulators. A May 2020 paper with Bekris links multi-arm rearrangement to path planning on graphs with vertex capacity constraints.

  5. By 2023

    Postdoc at Rice University

    As a postdoctoral research associate and Fellow of the Rice Academy at Rice University, they work with Lydia E. Kavraki. A 2023 paper with Zachary Kingston and Kavraki, 'Robots as AI Double Agents: Privacy in Motion Planning,' appears at the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems; it formulates privacy-aware motion planning through cost functions and demonstrates in simulated case studies how privacy-violating behavior can be injected.

  6. 2024

    Task and motion planning for execution

    In June 2024, Tianyang Pan, Shome and Lydia E. Kavraki post 'Task and Motion Planning for Execution in the Real,' accepted by IEEE Transactions on Robotics. The method plans around actions that cannot be fully grounded at planning time and hands each one to a human-designed or learned closed-loop behavior during execution. Failures feed back as constraints for new plans, and forty real-robot trials evaluate the approach.

  7. 2025

    King-Sun Fu honourable mention

    In May 2025, at the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation in Atlanta, they receive the King-Sun Fu Memorial Best Paper Award Honourable Mention for 'Task and motion planning for execution in the real,' published in IEEE Transactions on Robotics with collaborators from Rice University.

  8. As of October 2026

    Senior Lecturer at ANU

    They are a Senior Lecturer in the School of Computing at the Australian National University and an Associate Editor of IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters. In March 2026, ANU announces a Google-supported initiative in which they and Hanna Kurniawati lead a research stream on AI-powered robotics. Their group's open projects explore diffusion policies in task and motion planning, human-robot interactions in robot task-level reasoning, and links between PDDL, VLMs and task and motion planning.

Career

  1. NowAustralian National UniversitySenior Lecturer
  2. Rice UniversityPostdoctoral Research Associate

Education

  1. 2020Rutgers UniversityM.S.

From the biography.

  1. The United States employs an estimated 48% of people shaping AIIncludes Australian National University. We estimate where the people shaping AI work today, how universities, companies and research institutes split across countries, and how country shares have changed since the 1960s.
  2. The median h-index is 48 at universities and 14 at frontier AI labsIncludes Australian National University. The median h-index is 48 at universities and 14 at frontier AI labs. We compare publishing careers, recent citations, dual appointments and job moves across 2,420 university researchers and 308 frontier-lab researchers.
  3. More people shaping AI studied at Massachusetts Institute of Technology than at any other institutionIncludes Australian National University. We estimate where the people shaping AI studied and where their careers led. Massachusetts Institute of Technology leads with 467 former students, including 291 recorded doctorates.
  4. The company share of AI researchers’ top papers was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974Includes Australian National University. We estimate where the people shaping AI worked when their most-cited papers appeared: the company share was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974, and Google led all organizations in 2020–2024.

Colleagues

People named in this biography, and people with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

Photo: We have no published photo of Rahul Shome yet. Send us a free-licensed photo.

  1. Rahul Shome - Publications rahulsho.me. Checked 22 October 2026.
  2. Awards – MRS 2017, December 4-5 ewh.ieee.org. Checked 22 October 2026.
  3. Rahul Shome | ANU School of Computing comp.anu.edu.au. Checked 22 October 2026.
  4. [2005.09127] Synchronized Multi-Arm Rearrangement Guided by Mode Graphs with Capacity Constraints arxiv.org. Checked 22 October 2026.
  5. Rahul Shome - ANU Reporter reporter.anu.edu.au. Checked 22 October 2026.
  6. [2406.03641] Task and Motion Planning for Execution in the Real arxiv.org. Checked 22 October 2026.
  7. ANU experts recognised at world’s largest robotics conference | ANU College of Systems and Society systems.anu.edu.au. Checked 22 October 2026.
  8. Google supports ANU School of Computing to advance AI research and education | ANU College of Systems and Society systems.anu.edu.au. Checked 22 October 2026.
  9. Algorithms in Robotics for Task and Motion Planning | ANU School of Computing comp.anu.edu.au. Checked 22 October 2026.