Jean‐Claude Latombe

About

Jean-Claude Latombe stands as one of the most influential figures in computational robotics, with his research fundamentally shaping how robots perceive, plan, and navigate through complex environments. His landmark textbook *Robot Motion Planning* (1991), which has accumulated over 5,400 citations, remains a cornerstone reference in the field, establishing rigorous mathematical frameworks for understanding how robots can move safely and efficiently through space. His co-authored follow-up, *Principles of Robot Motion* (2005), extended this foundation to new generations of researchers with over 2,000 citations, bridging theory and implementation with remarkable clarity. Latombe's contributions span configuration space theory, probabilistic roadmap methods, kinodynamic planning with moving obstacles, and visibility-based pursuit-evasion problems — work that has proven transformative not only for robotics but for molecular modeling, surgical planning, and digital animation. His development and theoretical analysis of randomized path planners helped legitimize sampling-based approaches that now dominate modern motion planning. With research touching autonomous indoor navigation, multi-robot coordination, and lazy collision checking, his cumulative citation record exceeding 11,000 reflects an extraordinary breadth of lasting impact. Students entering robotics today invariably encounter Latombe's ideas at the very foundation of their education.

Research Focus

Key Achievements

Top Papers

1. 1
   Robot Motion Planning

   5,429 citations · 1991
2. 2
   Principles of Robot Motion: Theory, Algorithms, and Implementations

   2,062 citations · 2005
3. 3
   Robot Motion Planning: A Distributed Representation Approach

   988 citations · 1991
4. 4
   Randomized Kinodynamic Motion Planning with Moving Obstacles

   768 citations · 2002
5. 5
   Navigation Strategies for Exploring Indoor Environments

   453 citations · 2002
6. 6
   A Single-Query Bi-Directional Probabilistic Roadmap Planner with Lazy Collision Checking

   313 citations · 2003
7. 7
   A VISIBILITY-BASED PURSUIT-EVASION PROBLEM

   278 citations · 1999
8. 8
   A Random Sampling Scheme for Path Planning

   276 citations · 1997
9. 9
   Motion Planning: A Journey of Robots, Molecules, Digital Actors, and Other Artifacts

   266 citations · 1999
10. 10
    On Delaying Collision Checking in PRM Planning: Application to Multi-Robot Coordination

    248 citations · 2002

Key Collaborators

Contact & Links