Kostas E. Bekris
Rice University, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, University of Nevada, Reno, Foundation for Research and Technology Hellas, University of California, Berkeley, Center for Discrete Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science, Rutgers Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights
Papers
117
Total Citations
4,641
H-Index
34
About
Kostas E. Bekris is a prominent robotics researcher whose work spans motion planning, robot manipulation, location sensing, and simulation-to-reality transfer. He has made foundational contributions to sampling-based motion planning, notably advancing asymptotically optimal kinodynamic planning and developing sparse roadmap spanners that make near-optimal planning computationally tractable for resource-constrained systems — work that has collectively garnered hundreds of citations and shaped modern planning theory. Bekris has also been a driving force in robotic manipulation for logistics, contributing to the landmark Amazon Picking Challenge (425 citations), releasing influential RGBD datasets for warehouse object detection and pose estimation, and developing se(3)-TrackNet for robust 6D pose tracking in manipulation settings. His early work on WiFi-based indoor localization using IEEE 802.11b signal strengths (over 650 combined citations across versions) demonstrated practical, robotics-informed approaches to location-aware systems. More recently, his research has extended to tensegrity robotics and sim-to-real transfer, addressing core challenges in deploying autonomous systems at scale. With a portfolio spanning over 1,700 citations across diverse yet interconnected domains, Bekris represents a researcher whose theoretical rigor and applied innovation continue to meaningfully advance the field of robotics.
Research Focus
Key Achievements
Top Papers
- 1Robotics-based location sensing using wireless ethernet471 citations · 2002
- 2Analysis and Observations From the First Amazon Picking Challenge425 citations · 2016
- 3Asymptotically optimal sampling-based kinodynamic planning254 citations · 2016
- 4
- 5Robotics-Based Location Sensing Using Wireless Ethernet183 citations · 2005
- 6Robotics-based location sensing using wireless ethernet183 citations · 2002
- 7Sim2Real in Robotics and Automation: Applications and Challenges151 citations · 2021
- 8Tensegrity Robotics137 citations · 2021
- 9
- 10Sparse roadmap spanners for asymptotically near-optimal motion planning122 citations · 2014