Hitomi Kimura

About

Hitomi Kimura is a leading researcher at the intersection of robotics and reconfigurable computing, whose work is pioneering the integration of Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) into autonomous robotic systems. Her primary research areas include hardware-software co-design, component-oriented FPGA development, and automated design tools for robotics. Kimura’s major contribution is addressing the critical bottleneck of high development costs and complexity in FPGA-based robot systems. She introduced **cReComp**, an automated design tool for ROS-compliant FPGA components, which enables developers to harness the power-efficient, high-performance computation of FPGAs for tasks like real-time sensing, image processing, and actuator control—without requiring deep hardware expertise. Her follow-up work on a component-oriented FPGA design platform further lowers the barrier to integration, making FPGAs a viable, power-efficient alternative to traditional CPUs in robotics. With her most-cited papers accumulating 27 and 19 citations respectively, Kimura’s impact is evident in the growing adoption of her methodologies for building smarter, more efficient autonomous mobile robots. Her achievements are particularly notable for bridging the gap between hardware acceleration and the ROS ecosystem, a crucial step toward next-generation intelligent robotics.

Research Focus

Key Achievements

Top Papers

1. 1
   cReComp: Automated Design Tool for ROS-Compliant FPGA Component

   27 citations · 2016
2. 2
   FPGA Components for Integrating FPGAs into Robot Systems

   19 citations · 2018

Key Collaborators

Contact & Links