Kento Tomita

Kento Tomita
  • Position:
    Research / Technical Staff

    Research Scientist
  • Education:
    Ph.D., Georgia Institute of Technology, 2024
  • External Links:
Kento's Quick Links

  • Biography

    Kento's research interests are in autonomy and decision-making algorithms for challenging and safety-critical environments. At MERL, he is currently working on the synthesis of perception and planning. His Ph.D. thesis is about hazard detection and avoidance for autonomous planetary landings, where novel algorithms for hazard detection and hazard avoidance guidance were developed.

  • Internships with Kento

    • CA0107: Internship - Perception-Aware Control and Planning

      MERL is seeking a highly motivated and qualified intern to collaborate with the Control for Autonomy team in the development of visual perception-aware control. The overall objective is to optimize control policy where the perception uncertainty is affected by the chosen policy. Application areas include mobile robotics, drones, autonomous vehicles, and spacecraft. The ideal candidate is expected to be working towards a PhD with a strong emphasis on stochastic optimal control/planning or visual odometry and to have interest and background in as many as possible among: output-feedback optimal control, visual SLAM, POMDP, information fields, motion planning, and machine learning. The expected start date is in the late Spring/Early Summer 2025, for a duration of 3-6 months.

      Required Specific Experience

      • Current/Past enrollment in a PhD program in Mechanical, Aerospace, Electrical Engineering, or a related field
      • 2+ years of research in at least some of: optimal control, motion planning, computer vision, navigation, uncertainty quantification, stochastic planning/control
      • Strong programming skills in Python and/or C++

    See All Internships at MERL