James Cooney

Massey University, University of Michigan–Ann Arbor

Papers

Total Citations

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About

James Cooney is a roboticist whose research lies at the intersection of mobile robot navigation and dexterous manipulation in unstructured environments. His early foundational work on "Visual dead-reckoning for motion control of a Mecanum-wheeled mobile robot" (2004, 88 citations) established a robust approach for odometry-based localization, enabling precise motion control in complex settings—a key contribution to the field of autonomous mobile robotics. More recently, Cooney has focused on enabling robots to perceive and interact with cluttered, real-world environments. His 2022 paper, "Manipulation-Oriented Object Perception in Clutter through Affordance Coordinate Frames," introduces a novel framework that allows robots to generalize manipulation actions—such as pouring from a novel container—by recognizing task-relevant object affordances. This work directly addresses the critical challenge of robust operation beyond controlled lab settings. By shifting from geometric object recognition to functional, action-oriented perception, Cooney is helping to bridge the gap between robotic perception and practical, generalizable manipulation, a vital step toward truly autonomous service robots.