Masayuki Obata

About

Masayuki Obata is a robotics researcher whose work has centered on the development of autonomous outdoor service robots and intelligent sensor systems. He is best known for his pioneering contributions to the OSR series of robots — OSR-01 and OSR-02 — purpose-built to navigate urban environments and autonomously collect discarded trash such as plastic bottles, cans, and plastic bags. Through a sustained body of research published between 2005 and 2008, Obata and his collaborators tackled core challenges in mobile robotics, including hardware architecture design, manipulator integration, and the development of sophisticated vision and sensor systems capable of identifying and retrieving litter in unstructured outdoor settings. His most cited work, "Development of Outdoor Service Robots" (2006, 13 citations), alongside companion papers on sensor and vision systems, collectively demonstrate a cohesive research program addressing real-world environmental applications of robotics. Earlier in his career, Obata also contributed to control systems theory, proposing a feedforward compensator based on pole assignment regulation. Though his citation counts are modest, his research represents meaningful foundational work in socially useful autonomous robotics, particularly in the underexplored domain of robotic urban sanitation.

Research Focus

Key Achievements

Top Papers

1. 1
   Development of Outdoor Service Robots

   13 citations · 2006
2. 2
   Development of a Sensor System for Outdoor Service Robot

   12 citations · 2006
3. 3
   Development of a vision system for an outdoor service robot to collect trash on streets

   8 citations · 2005
4. 4
   Development of a Sensor System for an Outdoor Service Robot

   6 citations · 2008
5. 5
   Development of Outdoor Service Robot to Collect Trash on Streets

   5 citations · 2006
6. 6
   Feedforward compensator for control systems through pole assignment regulator

   4 citations · 2002

Key Collaborators

Contact & Links