Francis Colas
Laboratoire Lorrain de Recherche en Informatique et ses Applications, ETH Zurich, Board of the Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology, Institut national de recherche en sciences et technologies du numérique, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Université de Lorraine, Centre Inria de l'Université de Lorraine
Papers
32
Total Citations
2,092
H-Index
19
About
Francis Colas is a robotics researcher whose work sits at the intersection of mobile robotics, 3D mapping, and human-robot collaboration. He is best known for his foundational contributions to point cloud registration, with his 2015 review paper accumulating over 686 citations and becoming an essential reference for researchers working on geometric alignment in robotic systems. His 2012 benchmark dataset paper (259 citations) further shaped the field by establishing rigorous standards for comparing registration algorithms, addressing a critical gap in reproducible evaluation. Colas has also made significant strides in long-term 3D map maintenance in dynamic environments (197 citations), tackling the challenge of keeping robotic maps accurate and semantically rich across extended deployments in urban settings. His research extends meaningfully into disaster response robotics, contributing to the NIFTi and TRADR projects, where he helped design and deploy human-robot teaming systems for urban search and rescue scenarios. Notably, his work on brain-coupled interfaces for assistive robot navigation (112 citations) demonstrates a rare breadth, bridging neurotechnology and autonomous systems. Across his career, Colas has consistently advanced practical, deployable robotics while building the theoretical foundations that underpin modern localization and mapping research.
Research Focus
Key Achievements
Top Papers
- 1A Review of Point Cloud Registration Algorithms for Mobile Robotics686 citations · 2015
- 2Challenging data sets for point cloud registration algorithms259 citations · 2012
- 3Long-term 3D map maintenance in dynamic environments197 citations · 2014
- 4Brain-coupled interaction for semi-autonomous navigation of an assistive robot112 citations · 2010
- 5
- 63D path planning and execution for search and rescue ground robots86 citations · 2013
- 7A Review of Point Cloud Registration Algorithms for Mobile Robotics75 citations · 2015
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- 10Robust Data Fusion of Multimodal Sensory Information for Mobile Robots62 citations · 2014