Thomas W. Meiswinkel

University of North Carolina at Charlotte

Papers

Total Citations

H-Index

About

Thomas W. Meiswinkel is a robotics engineer whose early work laid foundational building blocks for autonomous vehicle navigation and computer vision. His most cited research, "Components of an autonomous all-terrain vehicle" (2010, 20 citations), details the design of control circuitry and software for an ATV’s power steering and braking systems—critical hardware-software integration for robotic off-road platforms. This work demonstrates his hands-on expertise in bridging low-level control systems with autonomous decision-making. In a complementary study, "A vehicle implementation of a color following system using the CMUcam3" (2009, 5 citations), Meiswinkel developed a real-time color-tracking algorithm using the CMUcam3 and Gears SMP robotics platform. By calculating the center of mass for a target color within the Y'CrCb color space, he enabled a vehicle to autonomously track and follow a moving object—a practical application of computer vision for mobile robotics. Though his citation counts are modest, these contributions are notable for their applied, systems-level approach to autonomous vehicle design, blending mechanical control, embedded systems, and vision-based perception. Meiswinkel’s work serves as a clear, accessible reference for students and engineers building entry-level autonomous ground vehicles.