Thomas E. Wheatley
Papers
9
Total Citations
58
H-Index
5
About
Thomas E. Wheatley is a robotics and control systems researcher whose career has centered on the challenges of real-time robot guidance, adaptive control architectures, and multiprocessor systems design. Working across several decades from the early 1980s through the 2000s, Wheatley made meaningful contributions to the foundational engineering of intelligent robotic systems capable of operating under strict real-time constraints. Among his most recognized work is his 1985 investigation into combining structured-light and infrared reflectance ranging techniques to improve robot servoing for rapidly moving objects — a practical solution to the inherent limitations of video-frame-rate sensing. His research into hierarchical multiprocessor control architectures, including contributions to the NASREM framework, addressed how to distribute and coordinate computational tasks reliably across parallel processors, emphasizing determinism as a core design principle over raw performance. His "skeleton approach" to system configuration offered a practical methodology for validating real-time control systems without full application code deployment. With contributions to space-based robotics, bus arbitration policies, and Air Force manufacturing automation programs, Wheatley's work spans both academic and applied domains. His cumulative citation record reflects a body of work that helped shape the technical foundations of real-time robotic control during a formative period in the field's development.
Research Focus
Key Achievements
Top Papers
- 1
- 2A Measurement and Control Model for Adaptive Robots12 citations · 1980
- 3Design principles for a real-time robot control system10 citations · 2002
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- 5
- 6Mapping Processes to Processors for Space Based Robot Systems5 citations · 1989
- 7
- 8Robotics support project for the Air Force ICAM program2 citations · 1981
- 9