Yoshiaki Katada

About

Yoshiaki Katada is a leading researcher in swarm robotics and evolutionary robotics, whose work focuses on designing intelligent, decentralized systems for exploration and communication. His most significant contributions center on the application of Lévy flight—a statistical pattern of movement found in nature—to improve target detection and network connectivity in swarm robotic networks. In his highly cited 2016 paper (32 citations), Katada demonstrated that Lévy flight outperforms traditional random walks in enabling robot swarms to efficiently locate targets while maintaining wireless communication with a base station via relay robots. This foundational work has been extended in subsequent studies (2022, 20 citations) to large-scale environments. Katada also made key advances in evolutionary design methods, including probabilistic finite state machines for swarm aggregation (2018, 14 citations) and connectivity analysis based on percolation theory (2014, 13 citations). His earlier research on evolutionary robotics introduced novel approaches to understanding fitness landscapes, including the estimation of neutrality using Nei’s genetic distance (2006, 12 citations) and tracking the Red Queen effect in competitive co-evolution (2010). With over a decade of impactful work, Katada’s research bridges biological inspiration and engineering, offering practical solutions for autonomous exploration and communication in complex environments.

Research Focus

Key Achievements

Top Papers

1. 1
   Swarm robotic network using Lévy flight in target detection problem

   32 citations · 2016
2. 2
   Swarm Crawler Robots Using Lévy Flight for Targets Exploration in Large Environments

   20 citations · 2022
3. 3
   Evolutionary design method of probabilistic finite state machine for swarm robots aggregation

   14 citations · 2018
4. 4
   Connectivity of swarm robot networks for communication range and the number of robots based on percolation theory

   13 citations · 2014
5. 5
   Estimating the Degree of Neutrality in Fitness Landscapes by the Nei’s Standard Genetic Distance – An Application to Evolutionary Robotics –

   12 citations · 2006
6. 6
   An Approach to Evolutionary Robotics Using a Genetic Algorithm with a Variable Mutation Rate Strategy

   10 citations · 2004
7. 7
   Swarm Robotic Network Using Lévy Flight for Exploration

   7 citations · 2018
8. 8
   Initial experiments on reinforcement learning control of cooperative manipulations

   7 citations · 2002
9. 9
   Swarm robots using Lévy walk based on nonlinear dynamics for target exploration

   5 citations · 2022
10. 10
    Tracking the Red Queen effect by estimating features of competitive co-evolutionary fitness landscapes

    5 citations · 2010

Key Collaborators

Contact & Links