Jim Mainprice
Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, Laboratoire d'Analyse et d'Architecture des Systèmes, University of Stuttgart, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Roche (France), Stuttgart University of Applied Sciences, Université Fédérale de Toulouse Midi-Pyrénées
Papers
24
Total Citations
1,027
H-Index
12
About
Jim Mainprice is a prominent robotics researcher whose work sits at the intersection of human-robot interaction, motion planning, and predictive modeling. His research has fundamentally advanced how robots perceive, anticipate, and respond to human behavior in shared workspaces — a challenge central to the safe deployment of collaborative robots in real-world environments. Mainprice's most influential contribution, "Human-robot collaborative manipulation planning using early prediction of human motion" (2013, 302 citations), introduced a landmark framework enabling robots and humans to perform simultaneous manipulation tasks safely in close proximity by predicting human gestures before they are completed. This early-prediction paradigm shaped subsequent work on human-aware planning, including his development of Goal Set Inverse Optimal Control methods for modeling reaching motions — papers that together have garnered over 200 additional citations. Beyond prediction, Mainprice has made substantial contributions to human-aware path planning, robot handover strategies, and real-time reactive motion generation under uncertainty. His 2018 paper on integrating continuous perception with reactive motion generation (107 citations) reflects his broader vision of robots that remain adaptive and safe even in dynamic, unpredictable settings. With over 800 total citations across his published work, Mainprice has established himself as a leading voice in socially intelligent and collaborative robotics.
Research Focus
Key Achievements
Top Papers
- 1
- 2
- 3Planning human-aware motions using a sampling-based costmap planner115 citations · 2011
- 4Real-Time Perception Meets Reactive Motion Generation107 citations · 2018
- 5
- 6Sharing effort in planning human-robot handover tasks70 citations · 2012
- 7Planning Safe and Legible Hand-over Motions for Human-Robot Interaction55 citations · 2010
- 8Human-robot interaction in the MORSE simulator28 citations · 2012
- 9Human–Robot Interaction20 citations · 2012
- 10An Attentional Approach to Human–Robot Interactive Manipulation19 citations · 2014