People

Personal Page Publications

Address:

4800 Oak Grove Drive
M/S 198-235

Pasadena, CA 91109

Phone:

818.393.6487

Fax:

818.393.5007

FORMER MEMBER

Alberto Elfes

Principal Member of Technical Staff

Biography

Alberto Elfes has been at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory since May/2001, where he is a Principal Member of Technical Staff. He leads research in the areas of autonomous robotic airships, coordination and cooperation of autonomous robot crews, and decision-theoretic models for complex systems analysis.

Education

EEng. in Electronics Engineering, ITA/Brazil, 1975
MSc. in Computer Science, ITA/Brazil, 1980
PhD. in Electrical and Computer Engineering, CMU/USA, 1989

Professional Experience

1989-1993: Research Scientist, Department of Computer Sciences, IBM T. J. Watson Research Center
1994-1997: Project coordinator, United Nations Development Program (UNDP)
1994-1999: Director, Automation Institute/Brazil
2000: Mercator Professor, Ulm/Germany
Since 2001: Principal Member of Technical Staff, JPL

Research Interests

Stochastic lattice models for robot perception, navigation and control
Autonomous airships
Coordination and cooperation of heterogeneous autonomous robot teams
Decision-theoretic models for complex systems analysis

Publications

2010

M. Wolf, L. Blackmore, Y. Kuwata, N. Fathpour, C. Newman, and A. Elfes, "Probabilistic Motion Planning of Balloons in Strong, Uncertain Wind Fields," IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, pp.1123-1129, 01 May 2010.

2009

Y. Kuwata, L. Blackmore, M. Wolf, N. Fathpour, C. Newman, and A. Elfes, "Decomposition Algorithm for Global Reachability Analysis on a Time-varying Graph with an Application to Planetary Exploration," IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robotics and Systems, pp.3955-3960, 01 October 2009.

2008

Y. Kuwata, A. Elfes, M. Maimone, A. Howard, M. Pivtoraiko, T.M. Howard, and A. Stoica, "Path Planning Challenges for Planetary Robots," IROS Planning, Perception and Navigation for Intelligent Vehicles Workshop, 01 January 2008.

2005

A. Elfes, J. Montgomery, J. Hall, S. Joshi, J. Payne, C. Bergh, "Autonomous Flight Control for a Titan Exploration Aerobot," 8th International Symposium on Artificial Intelligence, Robotics and Automation in Space, 01 September 2005.