Alan Papalia

I am a PhD student in Robotics with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute Joint Program. I’m fortunate to work in the Marine Robotics Group, with John Leonard.

My research focuses on the development of algorithms which enable widespread deployment of autonomous systems for low-cost, long-term environmental monitoring. Largely, I want to develop systems that advance scientific understanding of our world by improving the capable spatial and temporal resolution of our observations. Though I develop domain-agnostic methodologies, I am largely inspired by applications in marine environments. Climate, oceans, and the health of our planet are all topics that I am passionate about. I believe that the development of autonomous systems will enable us to better understand and protect our world and its ecosystems.

My work typically exists at the intersection of probabilistic inference, mathematical optimization, and geometry. Largely, I focus on building more robust algorithms with provable performance guarantees. These algorithmic advances enable improved navigational capabilities, allowing for lower cost sensors and generally expanding the performance envelope of existing systems.

Before grad school, I spent my undergraduate years working with a great group of people on the Illini Motorsports Formula SAE team. Here I oversaw a team of over 40 members, led system design as well as design of several key components, and took part in a number of international competitions.

select publications

preprint

Certifiably Correct Range-Aided SLAM

Alan Papalia, Andrew Fishberg, Brendan W. O’Neill, Jonathan P. How, David M. Rosen, and John J. Leonard

arXiv:2302.11614, 2023

arXiv Bib

@article{papalia2023certifiably,
  title = {Certifiably Correct Range-Aided SLAM},
  author = {Papalia, Alan and Fishberg, Andrew and O'Neill, Brendan W. and How, Jonathan P. and Rosen, David M. and Leonard, John J.},
  archiveprefix = {arXiv},
  journal = {arXiv:2302.11614},
  year = {2023},
}

ICRA

SCORE: A Second-Order Conic Initialization for Range-Aided SLAM

Alan Papalia, Joseph Morales, Kevin J. Doherty, David M. Rosen, and John J. Leonard

In IEEE Intl. Conf. on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2023

arXiv Bib

@inproceedings{papalia23icra,
  title = {SCORE: A Second-Order Conic Initialization for Range-Aided SLAM},
  author = {Papalia, Alan and Morales, Joseph and Doherty, Kevin J. and Rosen, David M. and Leonard, John J.},
  booktitle = {IEEE Intl. Conf. on Robotics and Automation (ICRA)},
  archiveprefix = {arXiv},
  year = {2023},
}