Papers
57
Total Citations
1,658
H-Index
21
About
Alexander Zelinsky is a pioneering robotics researcher whose work has profoundly shaped mobile robotics, human-robot interaction, and autonomous systems. His research spans robot navigation and path planning, physical human-robot safety, multi-robot cooperation, and vision-based control — fields in which he has made lasting foundational contributions. Zelinsky's early work on mobile robot exploration algorithms (1992, 274 citations) introduced an elegant approach to goal-directed navigation in unknown environments, enabling robots to map only what is necessary to accomplish a task — a computationally efficient insight still relevant today. His complementary path transform method (1994, 131 citations) advanced 2D motion planning by combining distance transforms with potential field properties, offering smooth, reliable path generation. As his career evolved, Zelinsky tackled the critical challenge of deploying robots alongside humans, delivering quantitative safety guarantees for physical human-robot interaction (2003, 220 citations) — work that laid important groundwork for collaborative robotics. His contributions further extended to whisker-based sensing, reinforcement learning for vision-driven navigation, grounded communication between heterogeneous robots, and frameworks for supervised autonomy. With over 1,000 combined citations across his most influential papers, Zelinsky's research has been instrumental in bridging theoretical robotics with real-world, human-centered applications.
Research Focus
Key Achievements
Top Papers
- 1A mobile robot exploration algorithm274 citations · 1992
- 2Quantitative Safety Guarantees for Physical Human-Robot Interaction220 citations · 2003
- 3Using Path Transforms to Guide the Search for Findpath in 2D131 citations · 1994
- 4Grounded Symbolic Communication between Heterogeneous Cooperating Robots90 citations · 2000
- 5Field and Service Robotics81 citations · 1998
- 6Whisker based mobile robot navigation61 citations · 2002
- 7
- 8Real-time visual behaviours for navigating a mobile robot51 citations · 2002
- 9Reinforcement learning for a vision based mobile robot45 citations · 2002
- 10Supervised Autonomy: A Framework for Human-Robot Systems Development44 citations · 2001