David Whitney
Brown University, Providence College, John Brown University, McGill University
Papers
11
Total Citations
634
H-Index
10
About
David Whitney is a robotics researcher whose work sits at the intersection of human-robot interaction, teleoperation, and mixed reality interfaces. His most recognized contributions center on developing intuitive frameworks that allow humans to communicate with and control robotic systems more effectively. Whitney's **ROS Reality** framework (2018, 108 citations) democratized virtual reality-based robot teleoperation by leveraging consumer-grade hardware, while follow-on work directly comparing VR and desktop teleoperation for robot grasping tasks (2019, 147 citations) established important benchmarks for the field. A defining thread throughout his research is the challenge of intent communication: his studies on mixed-reality head-mounted displays (2019, 126 citations) demonstrated that robots could convey motion intent to nearby humans through AR visualizations, advancing safety in collaborative workspaces. Whitney also made meaningful contributions to multimodal human-robot communication, showing how robots can interpret language, gesture, and context in real time to fetch objects and reduce errors through social feedback. Earlier in his career, he explored autonomous underwater vehicle navigation and curiosity-driven terrain learning. With over 600 cumulative citations, his research has meaningfully shaped how robots and humans share physical and augmented spaces.
Research Focus
Key Achievements
Top Papers
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4Reducing errors in object-fetching interactions through social feedback65 citations · 2017
- 5Interpreting multimodal referring expressions in real time62 citations · 2016
- 6
- 7
- 8Asymmetric Rendezvous Search at Sea15 citations · 2014
- 9Curiosity Based Exploration for Learning Terrain Models14 citations · 2015
- 10Ear-based exploration on hybrid metric/topological maps14 citations · 2014