J. D. Boissonnat

About

J. D. Boissonnat is a pioneering figure in computational geometry and robotics, best known for his foundational work on motion planning and nonholonomic systems. His research focuses on developing rigorous algorithms for robot navigation under kinematic constraints, with major contributions to optimal path synthesis for car-like robots and legged locomotion. His landmark 2002 paper on shortest paths for Dubins non-holonomic robots (156 citations) provides a complete partition of the configuration space for curvature-constrained robots moving only forward, establishing a theoretical framework still used in autonomous vehicle planning. His 1989 work on exact motion planning for polygonal objects (144 citations) remains a cornerstone of collision-free path computation. Boissonnat also made significant advances in 3D data representation, pioneering the use of constrained Delaunay triangulation for interpolating stereo data—a method that reconstructs polyhedral surfaces by exploiting visibility properties to identify empty tetrahedra. His work on spider robots (19 citations) introduced efficient algorithms for computing stable foothold placements, bridging robotics and computational geometry. With over 450 total citations across his most influential papers, Boissonnat’s algorithms continue to shape modern robotics, from autonomous driving to legged locomotion, and his geometric approaches remain essential reading for students and researchers in algorithmic robotics.

Research Focus

Key Achievements

Top Papers

1. 1
   Shortest path synthesis for Dubins non-holonomic robot

   156 citations · 2002
2. 2
   A practical exact motion planning algorithm for polygonal objects amidst polygonal obstacles

   144 citations · 1989
3. 3
   Optimal trajectories for nonholonomic mobile robots

   93 citations · 2006
4. 4
   Representing stereo data with the Delaunay triangulation

   31 citations · 2003
5. 5
   Motion planning for spider robots

   19 citations · 2003
6. 6
   Non-convex contour reconstruction

   12 citations · 1990
7. 7
   How the Delaunay Triangulation Can Be used For Representing Stereo Data

   12 citations · 2005
8. 8
   From spider robots to half disk robots

   3 citations · 2002

Key Collaborators

Contact & Links