Papers
42
Total Citations
2,606
H-Index
25
About
Ross A. Knepper is a roboticist whose research spans mobile robot motion planning, human-robot interaction, and autonomous manipulation systems. His foundational work on differentially constrained motion planning in state lattices (380 citations) established efficient, deterministic approaches to navigating complex environments—a cornerstone contribution to autonomous mobile robotics. His model-predictive motion planning research further advanced how robots anticipate and respond to dynamic surroundings with limited computational resources. Knepper has made significant strides in multi-robot coordination, notably with IkeaBot (184 citations), an autonomous system enabling heterogeneous robot teams to collaboratively assemble furniture—a compelling demonstration of practical, task-level robot autonomy. His work on manipulating deformable objects with collaborative robot teams extended these ideas into physically challenging domains. Perhaps most distinctive is Knepper's contribution to socially intelligent robotics. His research on robots asking for help using inverse semantics (167 citations) and his examination of human expectations of social robots (124 citations) address a crucial but often overlooked dimension: how robots communicate failure and manage human trust. His deep learning approach to model predictive control (344 citations) further demonstrates his breadth across perception, learning, and control. Collectively, his work reflects a vision of robots that are not merely capable, but genuinely collaborative partners in human environments.
Research Focus
Key Achievements
Top Papers
- 1Differentially constrained mobile robot motion planning in state lattices380 citations · 2009
- 2DeepMPC: Learning Deep Latent Features for Model Predictive Control344 citations · 2015
- 3RF-compass191 citations · 2013
- 4IkeaBot: An autonomous multi-robot coordinated furniture assembly system184 citations · 2013
- 5Asking for Help Using Inverse Semantics167 citations · 2014
- 6Herb 2.0: Lessons Learned From Developing a Mobile Manipulator for the Home127 citations · 2012
- 7Human expectations of social robots124 citations · 2016
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- 10Recovering from failure by asking for help79 citations · 2015