Yoshihiko Nakamura
Kyoto University, The University of Tokyo, University of California, Santa Barbara, Japan Science and Technology Agency, Stanford University, Naval Postgraduate School, NEC (Japan), Keio University, Kanadevia (Japan), NTT (Japan), Robotics Research (United States), Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence, NTT (United States), Tokyo University of Science, Laboratoire d'Analyse et d'Architecture des Systèmes
Papers
305
Total Citations
12,026
H-Index
48
About
Yoshihiko Nakamura is a pioneering robotics researcher whose work has profoundly shaped the fields of robot kinematics, redundancy control, humanoid robotics, and surgical robotics. Best known for his foundational contributions to inverse kinematics, his 1986 paper on singularity-robust solutions for robot manipulator control has amassed over 1,000 citations, establishing techniques still central to modern robotics. His closely related work on task-priority redundancy control, also exceeding 1,000 citations, introduced an elegant framework for managing competing objectives in redundant manipulators that remains widely referenced today. Nakamura extended these principles to optimal redundancy control using Pontryagin's maximum principle, demonstrating a rare combination of theoretical rigor and practical vision. His research broadened impressively over the decades: he tackled nonholonomic path planning for space robots, multi-robot coordination dynamics, and real-time humanoid motion generation using zero-moment point manipulation. Perhaps most strikingly, Nakamura applied his motion-control expertise to minimally invasive cardiac surgery, developing heartbeat-synchronizing surgical robots. His interdisciplinary reach even extended to cognitive robotics, exploring embodied symbol emergence through mimesis theory. With thousands of cumulative citations across diverse domains, Nakamura stands as one of the most influential and intellectually adventurous figures in contemporary robotics research.
Research Focus
Key Achievements
Top Papers
- 1Inverse Kinematic Solutions With Singularity Robustness for Robot Manipulator Control1,064 citations · 1986
- 2Task-Priority Based Redundancy Control of Robot Manipulators1,002 citations · 1987
- 3
- 4Dynamics and Stability in Coordination of Multiple Robotic Mechanisms335 citations · 1989
- 5Embodied Symbol Emergence Based on Mimesis Theory328 citations · 2004
- 6Nonholonomic path planning of space robots via bi-directional approach315 citations · 2002
- 7
- 8Nonholonomic path planning of space robots via a bidirectional approach279 citations · 1991
- 9Optimal Redundancy Control of Robot Manipulators260 citations · 1987
- 10Heartbeat synchronization for robotic cardiac surgery246 citations · 2002