Max Robotics — Global Service Robot Directory + US Certification

About

Josh Petersen is a robotics researcher specializing in mobile manipulation, humanoid robot control, and whole-body motion planning. His career spans over a decade of advancing robots capable of operating in real-world, unstructured environments — from uneven terrain navigation to household task execution. Petersen's early work focused on balancing and compliant control for the Dreamer mobile humanoid robot, a system combining a humanoid upper body with a holonomic mobile base. His most-cited paper (52 citations) established foundational stability analysis for prioritized whole-body controllers on such platforms navigating irregular terrains — a technically demanding and practically significant contribution to humanoid robotics. His research subsequently evolved toward mobile manipulation in domestic and commercial settings. A standout achievement is his one-shot teaching system, enabling robots to autonomously perform complex household tasks after a single virtual reality demonstration — a compelling step toward practical home robotics (25+ combined citations). His grocery store manipulation benchmark further demonstrated rigorous, metrics-driven real-world evaluation. More recently, Petersen has contributed efficient motion planning approaches using large-scale dynamic roadmaps, enabling sub-second planning for high-degree-of-freedom systems. Collectively, his work bridges theoretical control with deployable, human-centered robotic systems.