Yutaka Kanayama

About

Yutaka Kanayama is a pioneering researcher in autonomous mobile robotics, with foundational contributions to motion control, path planning, and vehicle kinematics that have shaped the field for decades. His most celebrated work, "A Stable Tracking Control Method for an Autonomous Mobile Robot," has amassed over 1,400 citations and remains a cornerstone reference for nonholonomic vehicle control, introducing an elegant Lyapunov-based stability proof for tracking posture and velocity references. Kanayama's parallel investigations into smooth local path planning produced influential frameworks built around cubic spirals and circular arcs, offering practical solutions for generating geometrically smooth, curvature-continuous trajectories — work he refined across multiple publications spanning 1990 to 2003, collectively attracting hundreds of citations. His contributions extend to vehicle path specification using straight-line sequences, fundamental two-dimensional wheeled vehicle kinematics, and integrated simulation environments for autonomous underwater vehicles. Taken together, his research portfolio reflects a career devoted to building rigorous mathematical foundations for autonomous vehicle navigation. Students entering robotics, control theory, or autonomous systems will find Kanayama's methods not merely historically significant but practically indispensable to understanding how mobile robots reliably follow prescribed paths in the real world.

Research Focus

Key Achievements

Top Papers

1. 1
   A stable tracking control method for an autonomous mobile robot

   1,414 citations · 2002
2. 2
   A stable tracking control method for a non-holonomic mobile robot

   250 citations · 2002
3. 3
   Smooth local path planning for autonomous vehicles

   217 citations · 2003
4. 4
   Trajectory generation for mobile robots

   164 citations · 1984
5. 5
   Smooth Local-Path Planning for Autonomous Vehicles1

   113 citations · 1997
6. 6
   Smooth Local Path Planning for Autonomous Vehicles

   102 citations · 1990
7. 7
   Vehicle path specification by a sequence of straight lines

   94 citations · 1988
8. 8
   Integrated simulation for rapid development of autonomous underwater vehicles

   57 citations · 2003
9. 9
   A new line tracking method for nonholonomic vehicles

   47 citations · 2002
10. 10
    Two dimensional wheeled vehicle kinematics

    38 citations · 2002

Key Collaborators

Contact & Links