Papers
5
Total Citations
80
H-Index
5
About
Jason Welsby is a robotics researcher whose work bridges biologically inspired sensing and autonomous navigation, with a particular focus on tactile perception in mobile and underwater robots. His key research areas include active tactile sensing, swarm robotics, and bio-inspired underwater exploration. Welsby’s most notable contribution is the development of the SCRATCHbot, a whiskered mobile robot that uses active tactile sensing to navigate and interact with its environment—a project that has garnered 29 citations and stands as a landmark in biomimetic robotics. He also advanced the field of swarm robotics with his work on gradient ascent using minimalist robots, demonstrating how simple agents can achieve complex collective behaviors through “secondary swarming” (25 citations). In underwater robotics, Welsby pioneered the use of artificial active whiskers on autonomous walking robots, enabling low-cost, covert seabed exploration and object localization in challenging environments. His application of stationary Naive Bayes classifiers to whisker data further refined tactile sensing algorithms for the BIOTACT project. With a career marked by innovative, nature-inspired designs, Welsby’s work has laid foundational groundwork for robots that can perceive and navigate through touch in both terrestrial and aquatic domains.
Research Focus
Key Achievements
Top Papers
- 1SCRATCHbot: Active Tactile Sensing in a Whiskered Mobile Robot29 citations · 2010
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