Alejandro Sarmiento

About

Alejandro Sarmiento is a leading researcher in robotics, with a primary focus on pursuit-evasion, surveillance, and motion planning in complex, obstacle-filled environments. His most influential work, "Surveillance Strategies for a Pursuer with Finite Sensor Range" (60 citations), tackles the fundamental challenge of maintaining visual contact with a moving target while navigating around polygonal obstacles, a problem critical to autonomous tracking and security systems. Sarmiento has made seminal contributions to the theory of active surveillance, particularly in scenarios with realistic constraints such as bounded observer speed and reaction delays—as demonstrated in his 2004 papers (31 and 19 citations, respectively), which provide necessary conditions and algorithmic strategies for guaranteed visibility. He also pioneered multi-robot search strategies for rapid environment exploration (27 citations) and extended his work to 3D environments with mobile manipulators, minimizing search times for hidden objects (11 citations). Notably, his development of the "Autonomous Observer" (1999) enabled remote experimentation in robotics, showcasing the practical application of his theoretical work. With a career spanning foundational theory to real-world implementation, Sarmiento’s research continues to influence autonomous navigation, surveillance, and robotic search-and-rescue operations.

Research Focus

Key Achievements

Top Papers

1. 1
   Surveillance Strategies for a Pursuer with Finite Sensor Range

   60 citations · 2007
2. 2
   Maintaining visibility of a moving target at a fixed distance: the case of observer bounded speed

   31 citations · 2004
3. 3
   A Multi-robot Strategy for Rapidly Searching a Polygonal Environment

   27 citations · 2004
4. 4
   On the existence of a strategy to maintain a moving target within the sensing range of an observer reacting with delay

   19 citations · 2004
5. 5
   Motion Planning Strategy for Finding an Object with a Mobile Manipulator in Three-Dimensional Environments

   11 citations · 2011
6. 6
   Maintaining visibility of a moving holonomic target at a fixed distance with a non-holonomic robot

   9 citations · 2005
7. 7
   A Motion Planning Strategy for Rapidly Finding an Object with a Mobile Manipulator in 3-D Environments

   8 citations · 2008
8. 8
   <title>Autonomous Observer: a tool for remote experimentation in robotics</title>

   6 citations · 1999

Key Collaborators

Contact & Links