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About

Francisco Blanes is a pioneering researcher in mobile robotics, with a career spanning over two decades focused on sensor systems, distributed control architectures, and real-time communication for autonomous robots. His most influential work, "Using infrared sensors for distance measurement in mobile robots" (2002), has garnered 252 citations, establishing foundational techniques for low-cost, reliable proximity sensing in navigation and obstacle avoidance. Blanes has made major contributions to distributed robot control, notably through the YAIR architecture and its evolution into ROS-based modular systems, enabling scalable, real-time coordination of sensors and actuators. His research on ultrasonic sensing—including differentiating walls from corners and reducing scan times for map building—has advanced environmental perception in cluttered spaces. With key papers on communication jitter in CAN bus protocols and agent-based architectures, Blanes has addressed critical challenges in distributed real-time systems. His work on integrating smart resources into ROS-based platforms (2017) continues to influence modern modular robot design. With over 440 total citations across his most-cited papers, Blanes remains a respected figure in sensor-driven, distributed robotics, bridging theory and practical implementation for autonomous systems.