Louis Whitcomb

About

Louis Whitcomb is a professor of mechanical engineering at Johns Hopkins University, with a secondary appointment in the Department of Computer Science. He is renowned for his innovative robotics research and development in space, underwater, and other extreme environments, as well as for developing novel systems for medicine and industry. Whitcomb founded and directs the Johns Hopkins Dynamical Systems and Control Laboratory (DSCL), leading student researchers in nonlinear and adaptive control of robot systems, robot actuators and sensors, mechanical design, and control systems design for high-performance robot control. His lab has participated in the development of underwater vehicles for oceanographic science missions, including the Nereus hybrid underwater vehicle that dove to the bottom of the Mariana Trench and the Nereid Under-Ice (NUI) hybrid underwater vehicle deployed under Arctic sea ice in 2014, 2016, and 2019. Whitcomb was co-PI on these vehicle development projects with collaborators at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI). He has extensive experience from more than 25 oceanographic expeditions and sea-trials. Additionally, he develops manipulators for medical robotic arms to improve control algorithms, enable dexterous surgical tasks, and enhance upper-limb prostheses. Whitcomb served as chair of the Department of Mechanical Engineering from 2013 to 2017 and is the director of the Master of Science in Engineering program for robotics. He was the…

Research topics

• Computer science
• Engineering
• Marine engineering
• Artificial intelligence
• Geology

Selected publications

• Scientific Challenges and Present Capabilities in Underwater Robotic Vehicle Design and Navigation for Oceanographic Exploration Under-Ice

  Remote Sensing · 2020-08-11 · 74 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  This paper reviews the scientific motivation and challenges, development, and use of underwater robotic vehicles designed for use in ice-covered waters, with special attention paid to the navigation systems employed for under-ice deployments. Scientific needs for routine access under fixed and moving ice by underwater robotic vehicles are reviewed in the contexts of geology and geophysics, biology, sea ice and climate, ice shelves, and seafloor mapping. The challenges of under-ice vehicle design…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Teleoperation and Visualization Interfaces for Remote Intervention in Space

  Frontiers in Robotics and AI · 2021-12-01 · 22 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Approaches to robotic manufacturing, assembly, and servicing of in-space assets range from autonomous operation to direct teleoperation, with many forms of semi-autonomous teleoperation in between. Because most approaches require one or more human operators at some level, it is important to explore the control and visualization interfaces available to those operators, taking into account the challenges due to significant telemetry time delay. We consider one motivating application of remote tele…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Interactive Planning and Supervised Execution for High-Risk, High-Latency Teleoperation

  2020-10-24 · 16 citations

  article

  Ground-based teleoperation of robot manipulators for on-orbit servicing of spacecraft represents an example of high-payoff, high-risk operations that are challenging to perform due to high latency communications, with telemetry time delays of several seconds. In these scenarios, confidence of operating without failure is paramount. We report the development of an Interactive Planning and Supervised Execution (IPSE) system that takes advantage of accurate 3D reconstruction of the remote environme…

  PublisherDOI

• Stable adaptive identification of fully‐coupled second‐order 6 degree‐of‐freedom nonlinear plant models for underwater vehicles: Theory and experimental evaluation

  International Journal of Adaptive Control and Signal Processing · 2021-03-25 · 13 citations

  articleSenior authorCorresponding

  Abstract This article reports the development, stability analysis, and experimental evaluation of a novel adaptive identification (AID) algorithm for underwater vehicles (UVs) for on‐line estimation of plant parameters (hydrodynamic mass, quadratic drag, righting moment, and buoyancy parameters) that enter linearly into 6 degree‐of‐freedom (6‐DOF) second‐order rigid‐body UV plant dynamic models. The reported UV AID method does not require instrumentation of vehicle acceleration as is required of…

  PublisherDOI

• Stable nullspace adaptive parameter identification of 6 degree-of-freedom plant and actuator models for underactuated vehicles: Theory and experimental evaluation

  The International Journal of Robotics Research · 2023-10-01 · 10 citations

  articleSenior authorCorresponding

  Model-based approaches to navigation, control, and fault detection that utilize precise nonlinear models of vehicle plant dynamics will enable more accurate control and navigation, assured autonomy, and more complex missions for such vehicles. This paper reports novel theoretical and experimental results addressing the problem of parameter estimation of plant and actuator models for underactuated underwater vehicles operating in 6 degrees-of-freedom (DOF) whose dynamics are modeled by finite-dim…

  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• NIH Grant R01EB002963

  NIH · $2.0M · 2010

• Collaborative Research: ITR-(ASE)+(DMC_INT): New Methods for the Exploration of Deep-Sea Hydrothermal Vents with Multiple Autonomous Underwater Robotic Vehicles

  NSF · $607k · 2004–2008

• RI: Small: Robust Model-Based Identification, Navigation, and Control of Underactuated Underwater Vehicles

  NSF · $500k · 2019–2024

Frequent coauthors

• Gábor Fichtinger

  Queen's University

  70 shared

• D. Yoerger

  Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

  62 shared

• Axel Krieger

  Johns Hopkins University

  61 shared

• Ergin Atalar

  Bilkent University

  58 shared

• Robert C. Susil

  Johns Hopkins Hospital

  53 shared

• Kevin Camphausen

  National Cancer Institute

  48 shared

• Jonathan Coleman

  45 shared

• C. Norman Coleman

  National Cancer Institute

  43 shared

Labs

• Dynamical Systems and Control Laboratory (DSCL)PI

Awards & honors

• NSF CAREER Award
• Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award
• Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engine…
• William H. Huggins Excellence in Teaching Award
• Alumni Excellence in Teaching Award

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