Kathleen Romanik

Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

Papers

Total Citations

122

H-Index

About

Kathleen Romanik is a computational geometry and robotics researcher whose work has made significant contributions to the field of autonomous robot localization. Her research centers on a deceptively elegant problem: given a robot placed at an unknown location within a mapped environment, how can it determine its position as efficiently as possible? Romanik's most influential work, "Localizing a Robot with Minimum Travel" (1998, 61 citations), addresses this challenge by developing strategies that allow a robot to use range sensing and compass readings within a simple polygon to pinpoint its location while minimizing movement—a critical concern for real-world robotic systems where travel is costly. Her earlier conference version of this work (1995, 31 citations) laid the theoretical groundwork for this line of inquiry. Extending these ideas, her research on optimal localization in tree-structured environments (1996, 13 citations) demonstrates the breadth of her approach across different geometric settings. Romanik has also contributed to the broader field through her survey on geometric probing and testing (1995), synthesizing connections between computational geometry, computer vision, robotics, and automated manufacturing. Her cumulative work has shaped how researchers think about efficient, sensor-based robot navigation in structured environments.