Jennifer Carlson
Papers
10
Total Citations
572
H-Index
7
About
Jennifer Carlson is a pioneering researcher in mobile robotics, specializing in reliability analysis, fault diagnosis, and sensor fusion for unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs). Her seminal work, "How UGVs Physically Fail in the Field" (267 citations), provides a comprehensive taxonomy of real-world robot failures from 10 studies and 15 models used in urban search and rescue and military operations, revealing a startling mean time between failures of just 6 to 20 hours. This foundational contribution, along with her reliability analysis of mobile robots (123 citations), has become essential reading for engineers designing autonomous systems for hazardous environments. Carlson also advanced sensor quality assessment by applying Dempster-Shafer theory's conflict metric to detect interpretation inconsistencies and adapt sensor allocation in unknown environments. Her research directly addresses critical challenges in deploying robots for mine clearing, nuclear waste handling, and military operations, where failure is not an option. By systematically documenting how robots break and developing methods to detect when sensor data is misleading, Carlson has provided the robotics community with both the diagnostic tools and the empirical data needed to build more resilient autonomous systems.
Research Focus
Key Achievements
Top Papers
- 1How UGVs physically fail in the field267 citations · 2005
- 2Reliability analysis of mobile robots123 citations · 2004
- 3Follow-up analysis of mobile robot failures116 citations · 2004
- 4Conflict Metric as a Measure of Sensing Quality28 citations · 2006
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- 6Analysis of how mobile robots fail in the field10 citations · 2004
- 7An investigation of MML methods for fault diagnosis in mobile robots10 citations · 2005
- 8Distributed error handling and HRI3 citations · 2004
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