Satoshi YASUTOMI

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About

Satoshi Yasutomi is a pioneering researcher in autonomous mobile robotics, best known for his early and influential work on behavior-based navigation strategies inspired by animal ethology. His key research areas include autonomous robot navigation, sensor-based mobility, and biologically inspired control systems for mobile robots. Yasutomi’s major contribution is the development of the **Sign-pattern-based Stereotyped Behavior (SbS)** strategy, which enables a robot to navigate unstructured outdoor environments by chaining simple, fixed-action patterns triggered by visual cues—such as road boundaries, flowerbeds, gates, and trees. This approach was implemented in the **Harunobu-4** robot, a self-contained vehicle equipped with two color TV cameras and a 68020 VME system, capable of traversing campus roads while avoiding obstacles and negotiating steps. Although his most cited paper from 1987 has accumulated only 3 citations, its conceptual framework anticipated later developments in behavior-based robotics and situated AI. Yasutomi’s work stands as an early, elegant demonstration of how simple, ethologically grounded rules can enable complex real-world navigation, influencing subsequent research in autonomous ground vehicles and field robotics.