Nathan Michael

About

Nathan Michael is a pioneering roboticist whose research has fundamentally shaped the fields of aerial robotics, autonomous navigation, and multi-robot systems. Best known for his groundbreaking work on quadrotor control and trajectory generation, his 2012 paper on aggressive quadrotor maneuvers has amassed over 860 citations, establishing foundational principles for high-performance unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) control. Michael's research consistently pushes the boundaries of what small autonomous systems can achieve, from enabling micro aerial vehicles (MAVs) to navigate complex multi-floor indoor environments without external computation, to developing tightly-coupled visual-inertial fusion for agile autonomous flight. A defining theme of his work is collaboration — both between robots and between ground and aerial platforms. His highly cited studies on cooperative manipulation and transportation with aerial robots, collectively drawing over 1,500 citations, demonstrated that teams of quadrotors could physically interact with and transport payloads with remarkable precision. His real-world application of these principles, including collaborative mapping of earthquake-damaged buildings, underscores the humanitarian potential of his research. With a body of work totaling thousands of citations and spanning perception, planning, and control, Michael stands as one of the most influential figures in modern aerial robotics.

Research Focus

Key Achievements

Top Papers

1. 1
   Trajectory generation and control for precise aggressive maneuvers with quadrotors

   866 citations · 2012
2. 2
   Cooperative manipulation and transportation with aerial robots

   628 citations · 2010
3. 3
   Cooperative Manipulation and Transportation with Aerial Robots

   466 citations · 2010
4. 4
   Opportunities and challenges with autonomous micro aerial vehicles

   464 citations · 2012
5. 5
   Cooperative Grasping and Transport Using Multiple Quadrotors

   457 citations · 2012
6. 6
   Collaborative mapping of an earthquake‐damaged building via ground and aerial robots

   379 citations · 2012
7. 7
   Robotics: Science and Systems V

   374 citations · 2009
8. 8
   Autonomous multi-floor indoor navigation with a computationally constrained MAV

   356 citations · 2011
9. 9
   Planning and control for cooperative manipulation and transportation with aerial robots

   234 citations · 2010
10. 10
    Tightly-coupled monocular visual-inertial fusion for autonomous flight of rotorcraft MAVs

    223 citations · 2015

Key Collaborators

Contact & Links