James C. Boerkoel
Papers
6
Total Citations
89
H-Index
5
About
James C. Boerkoel is a robotics and human-robot interaction researcher whose work spans autonomous mobile robotics, temporal planning, and the dynamics of human-robot trust and cooperation. His most celebrated contribution is the development of the first mobile robot system capable of operating on the moving floors of automotive final assembly lines, a landmark achievement that earned 30 citations and demonstrated the real-world viability of collaborative human-robot manufacturing environments. Building on this foundation, Boerkoel has advanced sensing and navigation frameworks for mobile robotic assistants tackling fetch-and-deliver tasks in complex human-oriented workspaces. Beyond physical robotics, Boerkoel has made meaningful strides in probabilistic temporal planning, proposing robustness metrics that incorporate domain-specific uncertainty — such as variable robot transition times — to produce more resilient schedules. His game-theoretic investigations into human-robot trust reveal how an agent's identity influences cooperative decision-making, findings with broad implications for designing robots that humans genuinely rely upon. His more recent tool, MAD-TN, offers researchers a principled method for quantifying fluency in human-robot collaboration using temporal constraint networks. Collectively, Boerkoel's research positions him as a thoughtful bridge-builder between autonomous systems engineering and the behavioral science of human-robot teaming.
Research Focus
Key Achievements
Top Papers
- 1
- 2
- 3Robustness in Probabilistic Temporal Planning16 citations · 2015
- 4Human-Robot Trust and Cooperation Through a Game Theoretic Framework14 citations · 2016
- 5Trust and Cooperation in Human-Robot Decision Making8 citations · 2016
- 6MAD-TN: A Tool for Measuring Fluency in Human-Robot Collaboration4 citations · 2019