Kento Tomita

Kento Tomita
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  • 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.

  • Recent News & Events

    •  NEWS    MERL researchers present 9 papers at IEEE ICRA 2026
      Date: June 1, 2026 - June 5, 2026
      Where: Vienna, Austria
      MERL Contacts: Radu Corcodel; Stefano Di Cairano; Purnanand Elango; Siddarth Jain; Alexander Schperberg; Kento Tomita
      Research Areas: Artificial Intelligence, Computer Vision, Control, Dynamical Systems, Machine Learning, Optimization, Robotics
      Brief
      • MERL researchers presented nine papers at the recently concluded IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2026 in Vienna, Austria. The papers covered a broad set of topics in robotics, including robot perception, visuo-tactile sensing, contact and pose estimation, manipulation, reinforcement learning, diffusion policies, loco-manipulation, contact-implicit trajectory optimization, legged locomotion, localization, and perception-aware planning.

        IEEE ICRA is the flagship conference of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society and the world’s largest and most comprehensive technical conference focused on research advances and the latest technological developments in robotics. The event attracts nearly 8,000 participants and receives more than 5,000 paper submissions.
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    •  NEWS    MERL researchers present 3 papers at AIAA SciTech Forum 2026
      Date: January 12, 2026 - January 16, 2026
      Where: Orlando, Florida
      MERL Contacts: Stefano Di Cairano; Purnanand Elango; Kento Tomita; Abraham P. Vinod; Avishai Weiss
      Research Areas: Control, Dynamical Systems, Optimization
      Brief
      • MERL researchers presented 3 papers at the recently concluded AIAA SciTech Forum 2026 in Orlando, Florida. The AIAA SciTech Forum is the flagship conference (more than 6,000 from 48 countries) of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, the world's largest professional technical society dedicated to aerospace.
        The papers presented by MERL researchers covered 1) a powered descent decision making approach to maximize the probability of safe landing, 2) a set-based robust, optimal, and resilient control architecture for autonomous precision landing, and 3) a continuous-time safe control policy for passively-safe spacecraft rendezvous on a Near Rectilinear Halo Orbit using successive convexification.
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  • Internships with Kento

    See All Internships at MERL

  • MERL Publications

    •  Velentzas, I.G., Tomita, K., "LIDIA: Localizing In the Dark with Illumination-Awareness toward Perception-Aware Planning", IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), June 2026.
      BibTeX TR2026-071 PDF
      • @inproceedings{Velentzas2026jun,
      • author = {{Velentzas, I.G. and Tomita, K.}},
      • title = {{LIDIA: Localizing In the Dark with Illumination-Awareness toward Perception-Aware Planning}},
      • booktitle = {IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA)},
      • year = 2026,
      • month = jun,
      • url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2026-071}
      • }
    •  Tomita, K., Elango, P., Vinod, A.P., Di Cairano, S., Weiss, A., "Powered Descent Decision Making: A Reachability-Steering Approach", AIAA SciTech Forum, DOI: 10.2514/​6.2026-0328, January 2026.
      BibTeX TR2026-014 PDF
      • @inproceedings{Kento2026jan,
      • author = {{Tomita, Kento and Elango, Purnanand and Vinod, Abraham P. and Di Cairano, Stefano and Weiss, Avishai}},
      • title = {{Powered Descent Decision Making: A Reachability-Steering Approach}},
      • booktitle = {AIAA SciTech Forum},
      • year = 2026,
      • month = jan,
      • publisher = {AIAA},
      • doi = {10.2514/6.2026-0328},
      • url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2026-014}
      • }