Claudia Esteves

About

Claudia Esteves is a prominent robotics researcher whose work sits at the intersection of motion planning, humanoid robotics, and autonomous systems. She is best known for developing innovative frameworks that bridge geometric path planning with complex robot dynamics, enabling robots to navigate cluttered environments while respecting real-world physical constraints. Her most influential contribution, "Planning 3-D Collision-Free Dynamic Robotic Motion Through Iterative Reshaping" (2008, 106 citations), introduced a two-stage iterative planning framework that has become a foundational reference in dynamic motion planning. This approach proved equally powerful for humanoid robots, underpinning her highly cited work on whole-body humanoid locomotion, support polygon reshaping, and dynamic walking — collectively earning hundreds of citations and establishing her as a leading voice in humanoid motion research. Esteves has extended her methods to diverse challenges including cooperative animation for virtual characters, space manipulator planning, and vision-guided reactive walking. Her 2014 work on visual servoing for humanoid locomotion demonstrates her continued push toward integrated perception and motion control. Earlier contributions to autonomous map-building further highlight the breadth of her expertise. Across more than a decade of research, Esteves has consistently advanced the state of the art in making robotic motion both practically feasible and dynamically sound.

Research Focus

Key Achievements

Top Papers

1. 1
   Planning 3-D Collision-Free Dynamic Robotic Motion Through Iterative Reshaping

   106 citations · 2008
2. 2
   Humanoid motion planning for dynamic tasks

   89 citations · 2006
3. 3
   Task-driven Support Polygon Reshaping for Humanoids

   62 citations · 2006
4. 4
   Animation planning for virtual characters cooperation

   44 citations · 2006
5. 5
   Smooth Collision Avoidance: Practical Issues in Dynamic Humanoid Motion

   34 citations · 2006
6. 6
   Motion planning for the large space manipulators with complicated dynamics

   23 citations · 2005
7. 7
   Vision-guided motion primitives for humanoid reactive walking: Decoupled versus coupled approaches

   19 citations · 2014
8. 8
   Motion planning for maintaining landmarks visibility with a differential drive robot

   17 citations · 2013
9. 9
   Planning Whole-body Humanoid Locomotion, Reaching, and Manipulation

   15 citations · 2010
10. 10
    Robot motion planning for map building

    15 citations · 2003

Key Collaborators

Contact & Links