Jake Welde

University of Pennsylvania

Papers

3

Total Citations

124

H-Index

3

About

Jake Welde is a roboticist whose research lies at the intersection of control theory, geometric mechanics, and autonomous aerial systems. His work is unified by a deep understanding of the mathematical structures underlying robotic motion—particularly symmetry and geometry—and applying those insights to enable more capable, autonomous robots. Welde’s most influential contribution to date is his 2017 paper on autonomous flight for moving-target tracking with a small quadrotor, which has amassed over 116 citations. In that work, he demonstrated a 15-cm, 250-gram robot using only an onboard camera and IMU to detect, localize, and track moving objects—a landmark achievement in resource-constrained autonomy. More recently, Welde has advanced foundational theory: his 2023 paper on symmetry and geometric flat outputs for free-flying systems (5 citations) provides new tools for analyzing locomotion on principal bundles, while his 2024 work on almost-global asymptotic tracking for fully-actuated systems on homogeneous Riemannian manifolds (3 citations) offers rigorous control guarantees for systems evolving on non-Euclidean spaces. Welde’s trajectory—from practical quadrotor tracking to elegant geometric control theory—marks him as a rising figure bridging applied autonomy and mathematical rigor.

Research Focus

Key Achievements

3
H-Index
3
Papers
124
Total Citations
41
Avg Citations/Paper
🏆 Most Cited Paper
Autonomous Flight for Detection, Localization, and Tracking of Moving Targets With a Small Quadrotor
116 citations · 2017
📈 Most Prolific Year: 2017 (1 Papers)
🤝 Key Collaborators: 5
🏛 Institutions: University of Pennsylvania

Top Papers

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3

Key Collaborators

Contact & Links

Available for collaboration
Content generated · 13 days ago