David Rawlinson

Robotics Research (United States), Engineering Systems (United States)

Papers

Total Citations

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About

David Rawlinson’s research focuses on autonomous robot navigation, topological mapping, and human-robot interaction. His major contributions lie in developing methods for robots to navigate unfamiliar environments without pre-existing maps, using efficient, human-readable topological instructions. His 2008 paper, "Ways to Tell Robots Where to Go," (20 citations) demonstrates how robots can incrementally interpret commands to explore and reach goals autonomously, validated through extensive real-world experiments. His 2007 work on "Topologically-directed navigation" (14 citations) advances simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) by enabling immediate goal-directed movement in unexplored spaces. Rawlinson also contributed to distributed visual servoing (2004, 5 citations), allowing a mobile robot to intercept targets identified by a fixed camera without prior calibration, and person tracking and pursuit (2006, 4 citations). His practical, experiment-driven approach bridges theory and application, making his work valuable for students and researchers in robotics, autonomous systems, and human-robot collaboration.