Bobbi Young

RTX (United States), Brigham Young University

Papers

Total Citations

1,259

H-Index

About

Bobbi Young is a pioneer in decentralized multi-robot systems, with her work fundamentally shaping how groups of mobile robots coordinate and maneuver. Her research focuses on formation control, decentralized robotics, and nonholonomic systems, where she has developed groundbreaking approaches that enable robot teams to execute complex maneuvers without centralized oversight. Young's most influential contribution is her 2003 paper on "A decentralized approach to formation maneuvers," which has garnered over 1,050 citations. This work introduced a behavior-based framework that decomposes complex formation maneuvers into sequences of simpler pattern transitions, presenting three distinct control strategies that have become foundational in the field. Her earlier 2002 paper on elementary formation maneuvers, with 112 citations, established the coupled dynamics approach for Hilare-type robots, demonstrating a common mathematical structure underlying various formation tasks. Young's 2001 work on improving multi-vehicle formation maneuvers, cited 93 times, added stability guarantees and robustness through group feedback. Her notable achievements include experimentally validating hybrid control schemes for nonholonomic robots, bridging theory and practice. Young's research has profoundly influenced autonomous systems, providing the theoretical and practical foundations for modern multi-robot coordination in applications ranging from drone swarms to autonomous vehicle platoons.