Zakary Littlefield

About

Zakary Littlefield is a robotics researcher whose work sits at the intersection of motion planning, kinodynamic systems, and autonomous robot locomotion. He is best known for his foundational contributions to asymptotically optimal sampling-based kinodynamic planning, a body of work that extends the theoretical guarantees of random geometric graph methods to robots governed by complex dynamics. His 2016 paper on this topic has amassed over 250 citations, establishing him as a significant voice in the planning community. Building on this foundation, Littlefield developed dominance-informed regions and informed heuristics to dramatically improve planning efficiency without sacrificing optimality guarantees, advancing the practical deployment of these algorithms in real-world settings. His research extends beyond theory into challenging physical platforms, including spherical tensegrity robots — highly deformable, dynamically complex structures — for which he pioneered kinodynamic planning strategies using effective gait primitives. He has also contributed to robotic manipulation, addressing motion planning in dense clutter and evaluating gripper modalities for warehouse automation. His software infrastructure work, including the PRACSYS architecture, has provided extensible tools that benefit the broader motion planning research community. Collectively, Littlefield's research bridges rigorous algorithmic theory with practical robotics applications across diverse and demanding domains.

Research Focus

Key Achievements

Top Papers

1. 1
   Asymptotically optimal sampling-based kinodynamic planning

   254 citations · 2016
2. 2
   Efficient and Asymptotically Optimal Kinodynamic Motion Planning via Dominance-Informed Regions

   37 citations · 2018
3. 3
   Kinodynamic planning for spherical tensegrity locomotion with effective gait primitives

   22 citations · 2019
4. 4
   Informed Asymptotically Near-Optimal Planning for Field Robots with Dynamics

   18 citations · 2017
5. 5
   PRACSYS: An Extensible Architecture for Composing Motion Controllers and Planners

   17 citations · 2012
6. 6
   Fast, Anytime Motion Planning for Prehensile Manipulation in Clutter

   16 citations · 2018
7. 7
   Evaluating end-effector modalities for warehouse picking: A vacuum gripper vs a 3-finger underactuated hand

   13 citations · 2016
8. 8
   An Extensible Software Architecture for Composing Motion and Task Planners

   11 citations · 2014
9. 9
   From Quasi-static to Kinodynamic Planning for Spherical Tensegrity Locomotion

   10 citations · 2019
10. 10
    Asymptotically Optimal Sampling-based Kinodynamic Planning

    6 citations · 2014

Key Collaborators

Contact & Links