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About

Nuno C. Martins is a robotics and control systems researcher whose work sits at the intersection of miniature robotics, autonomous surveillance, and probabilistic control design. He is perhaps best known for the TinyTeRP platform — a remarkably compact, modular terrestrial robot measuring just 1.7 × 1.8 × 2 cm and costing approximately $50 to assemble — which has become a foundational tool for studying sensing and control in large swarms of miniature robots, earning 17 citations since its 2013 introduction. Martins has made significant theoretical contributions to the problem of persistent surveillance under safety constraints, developing time-invariant memoryless control policies that model robot motion as controlled Markov chains. This elegant probabilistic framework allows robots to systematically patrol areas while avoiding forbidden regions, with related work on maximizing surveillance coverage appearing across multiple publications. His 2012 work on mixed-signal architectures for receding horizon control further addresses the practical challenges of deploying miniature robots in unconstrained environments, where nonlinear dynamics and strict power budgets complicate traditional control approaches. Collectively, Martins' research bridges rigorous mathematical control theory with real-world hardware constraints, making meaningful contributions to the emerging field of low-cost, scalable autonomous robotics.