Bavani Kannan

About

Bavani Kannan is a researcher whose work spans robotics, multi-robot systems, and autonomous platforms, with particular expertise in indoor localization, heterogeneous robot team coordination, and fault-tolerant systems. Her most cited contribution, "Robust Indoor Localization on a Commercial Smart Phone" (2012, 99 citations), introduced a practical dead reckoning methodology for low-cost indoor positioning with applications in emergency response and assistive technology. Complementing this, her foundational work on heterogeneous multi-robot teams — including tightly-coupled navigation assistance (79 citations) and mobile sensor network deployment through robot herding (54 citations) — established key frameworks for enabling capable robots to guide sensor-limited counterparts in complex environments. Kannan has also made significant strides in autonomous marine platforms, multi-robot planning with the xBots framework (44 citations), and autonomous recharging coordination for distributed robot missions. Her research extends to high-stakes applications such as planetary cave mapping and flood disaster mitigation. Across fault diagnosis work, she developed adaptive causal models and performance metrics that meaningfully advanced the reliability of intelligent robot teams. With over 460 total citations, Kannan's body of work reflects a sustained commitment to building robust, practical autonomous systems capable of operating in real-world, resource-constrained environments.

Research Focus

Key Achievements

Top Papers

1. 1
   Robust Indoor Localization on a Commercial Smart Phone

   99 citations · 2012
2. 2
   Tightly-coupled navigation assistance in heterogeneous multi-robot teams

   79 citations · 2005
3. 3
   Development of a Low Cost Multi-Robot Autonomous Marine Surface Platform

   55 citations · 2013
4. 4
   Heterogeneous mobile sensor net deployment using robot herding and line-of-sight formations

   54 citations · 2004
5. 5
   xBots: An approach to generating and executing optimal multi-robot plans with cross-schedule dependencies

   44 citations · 2012
6. 6
   The Autonomous Recharging Problem: Formulation and a market-based solution

   30 citations · 2013
7. 7
   Mapping planetary caves with an autonomous, heterogeneous robot team

   28 citations · 2013
8. 8
   Flood Disaster Mitigation: A Real-World Challenge Problem for Multi-agent Unmanned Surface Vehicles

   28 citations · 2012
9. 9
   Adaptive Causal Models for Fault Diagnosis and Recovery in Multi-Robot Teams

   28 citations · 2006
10. 10
    Metrics for quantifying system performance in intelligent, fault-tolerant multi-robot teams

    21 citations · 2007

Key Collaborators

Contact & Links