Ph.D. University of Pennsylvania, 2002
M.S. University of Pennsylvania, 1999
B.S. Rutgers University, Magna Cum Laude 1997

In 2002, Joel Esposito (CV) joined the Naval Academy as a civilian tenure-track professor.   The Academy is a 4 year undergraduate institution conferring the Bachelors of Science degree in a variety of accredited majors. Historically the academy faculty has maintained a 50-50 civilian-officer ratio.   The ABET Accredited Systems Engineering Major is the among the most popular majors at the Academy.  It is actually an applied control systems department.  At its core is a 5 course sequence in feedback control.  Upper level electives include embedded computing, modern control, communication systems and four courses in robotics.  Pedagogically, his current efforts are focused on developing a new course on autonomous vehicles (land, sea, and air).

Prior to joining the faculty, he spent several years as a graduate research assistant at the University of Pennsylvania working with Vijay Kumar at the GRASP Laboratory.  During those years he worked on a variety of DARPA projects, participated in the development of a programming language, CHARON, and  completed internships at Lockheed Martin, Sandia National Laboratories and Boston University. 

His research focuses on the use of algorithmic and numerical tools for designing and analyzing mobile robot motion controllers.

Academic Genealogy: Ferdinand Freudenstein --> Bernie Roth --> Kenneth Waldron -->  Vijay Kumar

Looking for someone else?  Perhaps you are looking from my wife's website?   She a Dentist in Annapolis.  

Courses Taught:

• ES301:  Modeling and simulation
• ES450:  Robotics
• ES451:  Mobile Robot Design
• ES308:  Control Systems Laboratory
• ES486A:  Autonomous Vehicles

Information on New Autonomous Vehicles Course:

• Syllabus, quick Description
• Labs and equipment

Pedagogical Articles:

• J.M. Esposito, M.G. Feemster, and J.M. Watkins, “Role of a Matlab real-time hardware interface within a systems modeling course”, Proceedings of the America Society of Engineering Education, June 2004
• J.M. Esposito, S. Avramov, R. DeMoyer and S. Parikh, “Promoting and assessing intuitive understanding in a junior-level modeling course”, Proceedings of the America Society of Engineering Education, June 2005

Swarm Manipulation:

• J.M. Esposito, E.T.Smith,  M.G. Feemster,  “Autonomous Tugboat Swarms”, Workshop on Swarming in Natural and Engineered Systems, Philadelphia, PA, May 2007
• E.T. Smith, M.G. Feemster, and J.M. Esposito, “Swarm Manipulation of an Unactuated Surface Vessel”, IEEE Southeastern Symposium on Systems Theory, March 2007, P. 16-20
• M.G. Feemster, J.M. Esposito and J. Nicholson, “Manipulation of large objects by swarms of autonomous marine vehicles: Part I -- Rotation”, Proceedings of the IEEE Southeastern Symposium on Systems Theory, p255-259, March 2006

Multi-Robot (Swarm) Motion Planning and Control:

• J.M. Esposito and T.W. Dunbar, “Wireless constraints in swarm motion planning”, IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, May 2006, p. 946-952  (SLIDES , VIDEO1, VIDEO2, from ICRA 2006)
• J.M. Esposito, and M. Kim, “Using formal modeling with an automated analysis tool to design and parametrically analyze a multi-robot coordination protocol: a case study” ,  IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man and Cybernetics: Part A, Systems. Vol 37, Issue 3, May 2007 Page(s): 285-297
• R. Alur, A. Das, J.M. Esposito, R. Fierro, Y. Hur, G. Grudic, V. Kumar, I. Lee, J. P. Ostrowski, G. J. Pappas, J. Southall, J. Spletzer, and C. Taylor “A framework and architecture for multi-robot coordination.”, International Journal of Robotics Research, Vol. 21, No.10-11, p. 977-995, Oct-Nov. 2002
• R. Alur, T. Dang, J.M. Esposito, Y. Hur, F. Ivancic, V. Kumar, I. Lee, P. Mishra, G. J. Pappas, and O. Sokolsky, “Hierarchical modeling and analysis of embedded systems” Proceedings of the IEEE, Vol. 91, No. 1, p.11-28, January 2003.
• J.M. Esposito and V.Kumar, " A method for modifying closed-loop motion plans at runtime", International Conference on Robotics and Automation, Washington DC, 2002  Finalist for the Best Paper Award
• J.M. Esposito and V. Kumar, “A tutorial on mobile robot programming, using a Hybrid Systems framework”, an invited paper for the Robot Programming Workshop, IEEE Intl. Conf. On Robotics and Automation (ICRA 2002), Washington, DC, May 2002
• K. A. McIsaac, A. K. Das, J.M. Esposito, and James P. Ostrowski, “A hierarchical, modal approach to hybrid systems control of autonomous robots”, Proceedings of IEEE/RSJ Intl. Conf. On Intelligent Robots and Systems, p1020-1025, v.2, November 2000
• J.M. Esposito and V. Kumar, “Closed loop motion plans for mobile robots”, Proceedings of the IEEE Intl. Conf. On Robotics and Automation, p2777-2782, v 3, May 2000

Enhancements to Rapidly Exploring Random Trees with applications to verification:

• J.M. Esposito and V.Kumar, "A State Event Detection Algorithm for Numerically Simulating Hybrid Systems with Model Singularities", ACM Transactions on Modeling and Computer Simulation, Volume 17, Issue 1, p. 1-22, January 2007
• J.M. Esposito and V.Kumar, "An Asynchronous Integration and Event Detection Algorithm for Simulating Multi-Agent Hybrid Systems", ACM Transactions on Modeling and Computer Simulation, Vol. 14, No. 4, Oct. 2004: 363-388.
• J.M. Esposito, G. Pappas, and V. Kumar, “Accurate event detection for hybrid systems”, in Hybrid Systems: Computation and Control (HSCC2001), Lecture Notes in Computer Science, volume 2034, Springer, March 2001 p. 204-217.
• J.M. Esposito and V. Kumar, “Efficient dynamic simulation of robotic systems with hierarchy”, in IEEE Int. Conf. Robotics and Automation, , p. 2818-2823, v.3, May 2001.
• J.M. Esposito, G. Pappas, and V. Kumar, “Multi-agent hybrid system simulation” Proceedings of the IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, p78-785, v.1, Dec 2001.

For a complete list see CV.