Rafael Kelly
Centro de Investigación Científica y de Educación Superior de Ensenada, Instituto Politécnico Nacional, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Tecnológico de Monterrey, Centro de Estudios Políticos y Constitucionales, University of California, Santa Barbara, Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Advanced Defence Materials (United Kingdom), Ensenada Institute of Technology, National Institute of Quality
Papers
117
Total Citations
5,679
H-Index
39
About
Rafael Kelly is a prominent robotics and control systems researcher whose career has profoundly shaped the field of robot manipulator control. His work centers on motion control, visual servoing, and stability analysis of robotic systems, with a particular focus on developing mathematically rigorous yet practically implementable control strategies. Kelly's most influential contribution, "Control of Robot Manipulators in Joint Space" (2005), has garnered over 670 citations and serves as a foundational reference for researchers and engineers worldwide. His extensive investigations into PD, PID, and nonlinear integral control schemes for robot regulators — collectively accumulating hundreds of citations — have provided reliable, tunable solutions for precise robotic positioning, including landmark work on PD control with gravity compensation and stable PI²D regulators that elegantly address real-world challenges like uncertain payloads and velocity measurement noise. A distinguishing thread in Kelly's research is visual servoing, where he developed robust, provably stable control frameworks for both fixed-camera and camera-in-hand configurations, with key papers drawing over 240–309 citations each. His Spanish-language textbook, "Control de movimiento de robots manipuladores" (2003), further demonstrates his commitment to making advanced robotics education accessible across linguistic boundaries. With well over 2,300 cumulative citations, Kelly's legacy represents a cornerstone of modern robot control theory.
Research Focus
Key Achievements
Top Papers
- 1Control of Robot Manipulators in Joint Space671 citations · 2005
- 2Robust asymptotically stable visual servoing of planar robots309 citations · 1996
- 3
- 4Stable visual servoing of camera-in-hand robotic systems241 citations · 2000
- 5
- 6A tuning procedure for stable PID control of robot manipulators163 citations · 1995
- 7Control de movimiento de robots manipuladores143 citations · 2003
- 8Global regulation of flexible joint robots using approximate differentiation140 citations · 1994
- 9PD Control with Desired Gravity Compensation of Robotic Manipulators137 citations · 1997
- 10Experimental evaluation of model-based controllers on a direct-drive robot arm126 citations · 2001