Arunkumar Rathinam

I am a Research Scientist at the Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability and Trust (SnT), University of Luxembourg.

My research lies at the intersection of computer vision and space robotics. I am interested in building AI systems that can bridge the gap between simulation and real data for spacecraft pose estimation, and leveraging these capabilities to enable autonomous relative navigation and on-orbit servicing missions.

Prior to joining SnT, I was a Research Associate at the Surrey Space Centre, University of Surrey, where I developed deep learning algorithms for non-cooperative spacecraft pose estimation and contributed to the FAIR-SPACE project. I received my Ph.D. from the University of New South Wales (UNSW) Sydney, where I worked on SLAM-based autonomous navigation for small body exploration. I completed my M.Sc. in Space Science and Technology at the University of Würzburg, Germany, where I contributed to the UWE-4 CubeSat mission.

Research News

Jan 14, 2026	I’ll organize the fourth edition of SPARK challenge at CVPR’26
Dec 31, 2025	I’ll co-organize the AI4SPACE workshop at CVPR’26
Dec 28, 2024	I’ll co-organize the third edition of SPARK challenge at CVPR 2024
Feb 10, 2024	Paper Accepted at ICRA'24
Aug 10, 2023	Opportunities and Challenges in DL-based Spacecraft Pose Estimation for Future In-orbit Servicing missions

Publications Spotlight

IROS’23

3D-aware object localization using gaussian implicit occupancy function

Vincent Gaudillière, Leo Pauly, Arunkumar Rathinam, and 3 more authors

Sep 2023

Bib PDF Code Website

@article{gaudilliere20233d,
  title = {{3D-aware object localization using gaussian implicit occupancy function}},
  author = {Gaudilli{\`e}re, Vincent and Pauly, Leo and Rathinam, Arunkumar and Sanchez, Albert Garcia and Musallam, Mohamed Adel and Aouada, Djamila},
  year = {2023},
  month = sep,
  publisher = {Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)},
}

ICRA’24

SPADES: A realistic spacecraft pose estimation dataset using event sensing

Arunkumar Rathinam, Haytam Qadadri, and Djamila Aouada

Sep 2024

Bib PDF Code Website

@article{rathinam2024spades,
  title = {{SPADES: A realistic spacecraft pose estimation dataset using event sensing}},
  author = {Rathinam, Arunkumar and Qadadri, Haytam and Aouada, Djamila},
  year = {2024},
  month = sep,
  publisher = {2024 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA)},
}

IEEE RAL

Hybrid Attention for Robust RGB-T Pedestrian Detection in Real-World Conditions

Arunkumar Rathinam, Leo Pauly, Wassim Rharbaoui, and 4 more authors

Dec 2024

Bib PDF Code Website

@article{rathinam2024hybrid,
  title = {Hybrid Attention for Robust RGB-T Pedestrian Detection in Real-World Conditions},
  author = {Rathinam, Arunkumar and Pauly, Leo and Rharbaoui, Wassim and Kacem, Anis and Gaudilli{\`e}re, Vincent and Aouada, Djamila and others},
  year = {2024},
  month = dec,
  volume = {10},
  number = {1},
  pages = {319--326},
  publisher = {IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters(RAL},
}

ICRA’26

Annotation Free Spacecraft Detection and Segmentation using Vision Language Models

Samet Hicsonmez, Jose Sosa, Dan Pineau, and 4 more authors

Jun 2026

Bib PDF Code Website

@article{hicsonmez2025domain6,
  title = {Annotation Free Spacecraft Detection and Segmentation using Vision Language Models},
  author = {Hicsonmez, Samet and Sosa, Jose and Pineau, Dan and Singh, Inder Pal and Rathinam, Arunkumar and Shabayek, Abd El Rahman and Aouada, Djamila},
  year = {2026},
  month = jun,
  publisher = {IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters},
}