Susan Miles

Papers

Total Citations

221

H-Index

About

Susan Miles is a pioneering roboticist whose work has fundamentally shaped the development of agile, real-world mobile platforms. Her most celebrated contribution is the creation of the Segway Robotic Mobility Platform (RMP), a transformative adaptation of the self-balancing Segway Human Transporter for robotics research. Detailed in her highly influential 2004 paper (221 citations), the Segway RMP offered the robotics community an unprecedented combination of speed, affordability, ruggedness, and agility—including a zero turning radius and compact footprint. This platform became a cornerstone for research in dynamic locomotion, autonomous navigation, and human-robot interaction, enabling countless labs to explore complex behaviors on a reliable, off-the-shelf system. By bridging the gap between human transport and robotic capability, Miles’s work provided a critical tool that accelerated progress in mobile robotics. Her legacy lies not only in the platform’s technical ingenuity but in its profound impact as an enabler of discovery, making her a key figure in the transition of robots from controlled labs to dynamic, unstructured environments.