Papers
34
Total Citations
2,060
H-Index
10
About
Ella Atkins is a prominent robotics and autonomous systems researcher whose work spans multi-vehicle coordination, cyber-physical systems, human-robot interaction, and space robotics. Her most influential contribution, "Distributed Multi-Vehicle Coordinated Control via Local Information Exchange" (2006), introduced second-order consensus protocols for multi-agent systems and has garnered over 1,478 citations, establishing her as a foundational voice in autonomous vehicle coordination theory. Atkins has made significant strides in applying cyber-physical system design to both terrestrial and space environments, exploring how tightly coupled computation and physical elements can optimize vehicle performance and mission reliability. Her more recent work on pedestrian trajectory prediction, notably the BiTraP framework leveraging variational autoencoders and recurrent neural networks, reflects her engagement with modern machine learning for autonomous navigation, accumulating nearly 200 citations since 2021. Atkins has also advanced human-robot collaboration, developing Markov Decision Process models for predicting human intent and investigating cooperative aerial payload transport guided by human supervisors. Her early contributions to NASA's Ranger robotic satellite servicer further demonstrate a career-long commitment to deploying intelligent, safety-conscious autonomous systems in complex, high-stakes environments.
Research Focus
Key Achievements
Top Papers
- 1Distributed multi‐vehicle coordinated control<i>via</i>local information exchange1,478 citations · 2006
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- 3Optimization and Control of Cyber-Physical Vehicle Systems102 citations · 2015
- 4Human Intent Prediction Using Markov Decision Processes48 citations · 2015
- 5Cyber-Physical Challenges for Space Systems33 citations · 2012
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- 8Vision-based following for cooperative astronaut-robot operations23 citations · 2003
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