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About

Michael Whitzer is a robotics researcher specializing in self-reconfigurable modular robots and swarm intelligence, with a focus on enabling autonomous systems to operate under extreme constraints. His work addresses fundamental challenges in distributed robotics, including reconfiguration planning for modular robots, topological mapping with resource-limited swarms, and decentralized assembly of structures. Whitzer's 2019 paper on distributed reconfiguration planning for modular robots, with 59 citations, provides algorithms for determining the sequence of actions needed to transform modular robots between configurations. His 2016 work on automated topological map creation using swarms of resource-constrained robots (32 citations) develops theory enabling inexpensive robots to map unknown environments without metric information, leveraging algebraic topology. Whitzer also contributed to sensor coverage problems with local sensing (31 citations) and decentralized assembly algorithms for modular robots building structures like bridges (30 citations). His most recent work, DC-CAPT (2020), addresses concurrent assignment and trajectory planning for Dubins cars—robots with constrained turning radii. Whitzer's research consistently pushes the boundaries of what simple, resource-limited robot swarms can achieve through clever algorithmic design and topological reasoning.