Tobias Kaupp

About

Tobias Kaupp is a robotics researcher whose work spans component-based software engineering, human-robot collaboration, and autonomous systems. He is perhaps best known for his foundational contributions to modular robotics software architecture, most notably through his highly cited 2005 paper "Towards Component-Based Robotics" (203 citations), which introduced a principled framework for composing complex robotic systems from reusable software components — a paradigm that significantly influenced how the mobile robotics community approaches system design. This work was further crystallized through the Orca component model and repository (93 citations), providing practical infrastructure for the research community. Beyond software architecture, Kaupp made meaningful contributions to human-robot teaming, developing probabilistic approaches to collaborative decision-making and shared environment representation that enable robots and humans to work together more effectively in real-world scenarios. His research on adjustable autonomy — determining the right balance between human oversight and robot independence — reflects a sophisticated understanding of practical deployment challenges. In later work, Kaupp demonstrated versatility by applying deep learning techniques to people detection on mobile robots (48 citations). Across decentralized sensor networks, motion planning, and multi-level state estimation, his research consistently bridges theoretical rigor with real-world robotic application, accumulating over 600 citations throughout his career.

Research Focus

Key Achievements

Top Papers

1. 1
   Towards component-based robotics

   203 citations · 2005
2. 2
   Orca: A Component Model and Repository

   93 citations · 2007
3. 3
   Human–robot communication for collaborative decision making — A probabilistic approach

   93 citations · 2010
4. 4
   Scalable Control of Decentralised Sensor Platforms

   53 citations · 2003
5. 5
   People Detection with Depth Silhouettes and Convolutional Neural Networks on a Mobile Robot

   48 citations · 2021
6. 6
   Implementation of an Indoor Active Sensor Network

   28 citations · 2006
7. 7
   Randomised MPC-based motion-planning for mobile robot obstacle avoidance

   27 citations · 2009
8. 8
   Shared environment representation for a human‐robot team performing information fusion

   25 citations · 2007
9. 9
   Measuring human-robot team effectiveness to determine an appropriate autonomy level

   20 citations · 2008
10. 10
    Multi-level State Estimation in an Outdoor Decentralised Sensor Network

    19 citations · 2008

Key Collaborators

Contact & Links