Brian E. Jackson

Stanford University, Carnegie Mellon University

Papers

Total Citations

308

H-Index

About

Brian E. Jackson is a leading researcher in optimization-based robot motion planning and control, with a focus on enabling real-time, constraint-aware autonomy for complex robotic systems. His major contributions center on developing fast, numerically robust solvers for trajectory optimization and model-predictive control (MPC). Jackson’s most influential work, ALTRO (2019, 177 citations), introduced a novel solver that bridges the gap between general-purpose nonlinear programming and computationally efficient methods, making constrained trajectory optimization practical for real-time applications. He extended this framework to multi-robot systems with his work on scalable cooperative transport of cable-suspended loads using UAVs (2020, 82 citations), demonstrating how distributed trajectory optimization can achieve rich system-level behavior without centralized bottlenecks. Jackson also advanced planning on non-Euclidean spaces with his "Planning With Attitude" paper (2021, 31 citations), providing an accessible approach for handling 3D rotations in floating-base robots. His ALTRO-C solver (2021) further pushed the boundaries of real-time conic MPC. Through these contributions, Jackson has significantly improved the speed, scalability, and reliability of optimization algorithms for robotic systems, enabling more agile and cooperative robots in dynamic environments.