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About

Andrej Kitanov is a robotics researcher whose work centers on autonomous navigation, simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM), and multi-robot coordination in unknown environments. His most influential contribution is the development of a fast planar surface 3D SLAM system using LIDAR (47 citations), which significantly improved the efficiency of 3D mapping for mobile robots. Kitanov also introduced the novel concept of topological belief space planning (BSP) in his 2018 paper, a theoretical advance that uses the topological properties of factor graphs to direct optimal search—a departure from conventional BSP approaches. His work on active SLAM for complete coverage mapping (12 citations) and global localization using 3D planar surface segments (6 citations each) has furthered the field of robot perception, particularly in leveraging depth cameras for robust localization. Earlier in his career, Kitanov contributed to stereo image registration with a selective hypothesis generation strategy for RANSAC (3 citations). Across his publications, Kitanov has demonstrated a consistent focus on practical, real-time solutions for robot autonomy, making his research valuable for students and engineers working on SLAM, exploration, and multi-robot systems.