Papers
86
Total Citations
2,102
H-Index
25
About
Robert Fitch is a robotics researcher whose work spans multi-robot systems, active perception, field robotics, and autonomous planning. His most significant contributions include the development of Dec-MCTS, a decentralized Monte Carlo tree search algorithm enabling multi-robot active perception that has garnered 186 citations, and an Active SLAM framework combining model predictive control with area coverage and uncertainty reduction (118 citations). Fitch has made notable strides in agricultural robotics, with his vision-based obstacle detection and navigation system for broad-acre farming attracting 152 citations, demonstrating real-world impact beyond the laboratory. His pioneering work in robotic ecology — using autonomous aerial vehicles to track radio-tagged wildlife — bridges robotics and conservation science, with related papers earning 89 and 79 citations respectively. Earlier in his career, Fitch established foundational contributions in self-reconfiguring modular robots, addressing locomotion scalability, distributed control, and heterogeneous reconfiguration planning. His research consistently addresses the challenge of making autonomous robots practical and intelligent in complex, dynamic environments, blending algorithmic innovation with meaningful real-world deployment across ecology, agriculture, and multi-agent coordination.
Research Focus
Key Achievements
Top Papers
- 1Dec-MCTS: Decentralized planning for multi-robot active perception186 citations · 2018
- 2Vision‐based Obstacle Detection and Navigation for an Agricultural Robot152 citations · 2016
- 3Active SLAM for Mobile Robots With Area Coverage and Obstacle Avoidance118 citations · 2020
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- 9Reconfiguration planning for heterogeneous self-reconfiguring robots68 citations · 2004
- 10Online planning for multi-robot active perception with self-organising maps58 citations · 2017