Susan Hert

About

Susan Hert is a pioneering roboticist whose work laid foundational algorithms for multi-robot coordination and autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) navigation. Her research centers on terrain-covering, area partitioning, and motion planning for tethered robots—problems critical to environmental monitoring, search-and-rescue, and underwater exploration. Hert’s most influential contribution is her terrain-covering algorithm for AUVs, which has garnered over 326 combined citations and remains a cornerstone for autonomous seabed mapping and inspection tasks. She also introduced the anchored area partition problem, a novel polygon decomposition method that enables efficient workspace division among multiple robots performing coverage tasks; this work has earned 83 citations and directly impacts agricultural robotics and floor-cleaning fleets. Hert further advanced the field by tackling the complex challenge of motion planning for multiple tethered robots, developing strategies to prevent cable tangling in both planar and three-dimensional environments—a problem inspired by coordinating tethered underwater vehicles. Her 1996 paper on this topic remains highly cited, and her 1999 extension to 3D motion planning has been instrumental in marine robotics. Through these contributions, Hert has shaped how robots collaborate in constrained, real-world spaces.

Research Focus

Key Achievements

Top Papers

1. 1
   A Terrain-Covering Algorithm for an AUV

   182 citations · 1996
2. 2
   A terrain-covering algorithm for an AUV

   144 citations · 1996
3. 3
   Polygon Area Decomposition for Multiple-Robot Workspace Division

   83 citations · 1998
4. 4
   The ties that bind: Motion planning for multiple tethered robots

   31 citations · 1996
5. 5
   Motion planning in R/sup 3/ for multiple tethered robots

   31 citations · 1999
6. 6
   The Area Partitioning Problem

   21 citations · 2000
7. 7
   The ties that bind: motion planning for multiple tethered robots

   16 citations · 2002
8. 8
   Motion planning in R 3 for multiple tethered robots.

   12 citations · 1997
9. 9
   Moving multiple tethered robots between arbitrary configurations

   10 citations · 2002
10. 10
    Planar Curve Routing for Tethered-Robot Motion Planning

    7 citations · 1997

Key Collaborators

Contact & Links