Anthony Barrett

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology

Papers

Total Citations

H-Index

About

Anthony Barrett is a leading researcher in autonomous multi-agent systems and robotic coordination, with a focus on enabling spacecraft and robot teams to act intelligently and robustly in real time. His foundational work on using abstraction to coordinate multiple robotic spacecraft (2002) introduced iterative repair planners that allow autonomous teams to share limited resources efficiently, a critical capability for modern multi-spacecraft missions. Barrett also pioneered domain compilation for embedded real-time planning (2003), a middle-ground approach that produces more robust plans without excessive computational burden—key for real-time robotic control. His research on representing and executing plan sequences for multi-agent systems (2001) advanced the integration of planning and execution for teams, using finite state machines to model joint activities. More recently, he developed a model-based executive for robot teams (2006), enabling robust command of heterogeneous systems as a single entity by compiling collective population models. Though his citation counts (2–8 per paper) reflect a specialized, early-career impact, his ideas on abstraction, real-time planning, and multi-agent execution have influenced autonomous space operations and robotic coordination. Barrett’s work remains essential reading for researchers building scalable, resilient multi-robot systems.