Harold MURCIA ☕️
Harold MURCIA

Postdoctoral Researcher

INRAE

About Me

I am a postdoctoral researcher at INRAE in Avignon, France, working on LiDAR-based 3D perception and plant phenotyping. I hold a PhD in Robotics from INSA Toulouse, where I conducted my research at LAAS-CNRS on mobile LiDAR systems for orchard characterization.

Before my PhD, I worked for nearly nine years as a faculty member and researcher at the University of Ibagué, Colombia. My research interests include robotics, LiDAR, computer vision, point cloud processing, sensor fusion, and artificial intelligence, with a focus on extracting quantitative information from complex natural environments.

Interests
  • Computer Vision & AI
  • Robotics & Autonomous Systems
  • LiDAR & 3D Perception
Education

  • PhD in Robotics

    LAAS-CNRS & INSA - Toulouse

  • Master of Science in Control Engineering,

    Universidad de Ibagué

  • Electronic Engineer (Five years program)

    Universidad de Ibagué - Universiteit Gent

My Research

As a research engineer with a passion for both development and innovation, I focus on guiding projects from concept to experimental verification, involving both hardware and software layers. My experience includes designing electronic systems, modeling and control systems, remote measurement and IoT systems, data processing, machine vision, and machine learning. Recently, I’ve been working on 3D processing systems and methods using LiDAR technology.

…

I’m always open to new collaborations 🚀, Please feel free to reach out!

⬇️

Research outputs
CategoryAmountLabel
International journal articles5[J]
International conference articles9[C]
Colombian conference articles9[C]
Algorithms shared on GitHub1[G]
Software registration1[S]
Open source databases1[D]

Papers

  1. Murcia, H., & Lacroix, S. (2026). A beam-informed framework for Leaf Area Density estimation from Mobile Terrestrial Laser Scanning. Precision Agriculture, 27(4), 118.

  2. Murcia, H., & Lacroix, S. (2026). A simulation-to-real framework for architectural characterisation of orchard trees using mobile LiDAR. Precision Agriculture, 27(4), 105.

  3. Forero, M. G., Murcia, H. F., Méndez, D., & Betancourt-Lozano, J. (2022). LiDAR platform for acquisition of 3D plant phenotyping database. Plants, 11(17), 2199.

  4. Murcia, H. F., Tilaguy, S., & Ouazaa, S. (2021). Development of a low-cost system for 3D orchard mapping integrating UGV and LiDAR. Plants, 10(12), 2804.

  5. Hernandez, A., Murcia, H., Copot, C., & De Keyser, R. (2015). Towards the development of a smart flying sensor: Illustration in the field of precision agriculture. Sensors, 15(7), 16688-16709.

Conferences

  1. Murcia Moreno, H., & Lacroix, S. (2025). From simulation to field: A ground truth-free approach for 3D orchard monitoring. In 15th European Conference on Precision Agriculture, Barcelona, Spain (pp. 553-560). Wageningen Academic.

  2. Murcia Moreno, H., & Lacroix, S. (2025). Simulation of LiDAR, Unmanned Ground Vehicles, and Neural Networks for Leaf Area Estimation in Orchards. In 15th European Conference on Precision Agriculture, Barcelona, Spain (pp. 553-560). Wageningen Academic.

  3. Murcia Moreno, H., & Lacroix, S. (2025). Characterizing Tree Structural Variability in Orchards Using UGV LiDAR Sensing. In CIMM 2025: XII International Congress on Mechanical Engineering, Mechatronics and Automation, Montería, Colombia.

  4. Murcia Moreno, H., & Lacroix, S. (2025). Pilotscan: A Fully Integrated Autonomous Portable LiDAR System for Precise 3D Mapping. In CIMM 2025: XII International Congress on Mechanical Engineering, Mechatronics and Automation, Montería, Colombia.

  5. Murcia, H., Cháux, J., & Aldana, Y. (2022, November). A low-cost 3D mapping system for indoor scenes based on a 2D LiDAR on-board an UGV. In 9th Workshop on Engineering Applications (WEA 2022), Bogotá, Colombia (pp. 337-352). Springer Nature Switzerland.

  6. Murcia, H. F., & Tique Rangel, J. C. (2021). Head-mouse: Software for the manipulation of a mouse cursor by eye and head movement for people with disabilities. Dirección Nacional de Derechos de Autor - Colombia.

  7. Murcia, H. F., & Rubio, C. F. (2021). A comparison of LiDAR odometry and mapping techniques. In 5th IEEE Colombian Conference on Automatic Control (CCAC 2021).

  8. Murcia, H., Sanabria, D., Méndez, D., & Forero, M. G. (2021). A comparative study of 3D plant modeling systems based on low-cost 2D LiDAR and Kinect. In Pattern Recognition. MCPR 2021. Lecture Notes in Computer Science (Vol. 12725). Springer.

  9. Murcia, H. F., Sanabria, D. A., Méndez, D., & Forero, M. G. (2020). Development of a simulation tool for 3D plant modeling based on 2D LiDAR sensor. In 2020 Virtual Symposium in Plant Omics Sciences (OMICAS), pp. 1-6.

  10. Méndez, D., Forero, M. G., & Murcia, H. F. (2020, August). Comparative study of point cloud registration techniques between ICP and others. In Applications of Digital Image Processing XLIII (Vol. 11510, p. 115101H). International Society for Optics and Photonics.

  11. Murcia-Moreno, H., & Triana, J. (2019). A personal activity recognition system based on smart devices. In Workshop Engineering Applications (WEA 2019), Santa Marta, Colombia.

  12. Murcia-Moreno, H., Valenciano-Claros, J., & Tapiero, Y. (2018). Line-follower robot control algorithm. GitHub.

  13. Murcia-Moreno, H., Valenciano-Claros, J., & Tapiero, Y. (2018). Development of a line-follower robot for robotic competition purposes. In Workshop Engineering Applications (WEA 2018), Medellin, Colombia.

  14. Murcia-Moreno, H., & López-Gaona, J. (2018). Towards the connection of agriculture with the Internet of Things in Colombian farms. In Primer Congreso LatinoAmericano de Agricultura de Presición, Santiago de Chile, Chile.

  15. Murcia-Moreno, H., Mora, L., & Monroy, M. F. (2018). 3D scene reconstruction based on a 2D moving LiDAR. In Communications in Computer and Information Science (November 2018). Springer, Cham.

  16. Murcia-Moreno, H., González-Quintero, B., & López-Gaona, J. (2017). An online learning method for embedded decision support in agriculture irrigation. In Advances in Information and Communication Technologies for Adapting Agriculture to Climate Change: Proceedings of the International Conference of ICT for Adapting Agriculture to Climate Change (AACC'17), Popayán, Colombia (Vol. 687, p. 234). Springer.

  17. Pena, L. E., Murcia, H., Londono, W., & Botina, H. (2017). A low-cost instrumentation system for levels in surface water currents. In Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Sensors and Electronic Instrumentation Advances (SEIA 2016), Moscow, Russia, pp. 731-740.

  18. Murcia, H., & González, E. (2016). Performance comparison between PID and LQR control on a 2-wheel inverted pendulum robot. In IEEE Colombian Conference on Robotics and Automation (CCRA 2016), Bogotá, Colombia.

  19. Barrero, O., Murcia, H., & Valenciano, J. (2016). Modeling and control of a 4-wheel mobile robot. In XVII Latin American Congress of Automatic Control (CLCA 2016), Medellin, Colombia.