About

I work to develop safety-verifiable, geometric and vision-based methods for autonomous robotic control and collision avoidance. In general my research interests revolve around perception-first planning in multi-agent systems.

• Contact

Projects & Contributions

• Comments on NHTSA Notice of Proposed Rulemaking: Automated Driving Systems-Equipped Vehicle Safety, Transparency, and Evaluation Program
• NSF SBIR Phase II: Autonomous active safety systems for verifiably safe operation of ground vehicles
• Comments on NHTSA Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking: Framework for Automated Driving System Safety
• NSF SBIR Phase I: Autonomous active safety systems for verifiably safe operation of ground vehicles
• ROS 2 Safety-Critical Working Group
• US Robotics Roadmap 2020

Education

PhD in Computer Science, 2012—2017

School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering
Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana
IU Computer Vision Lab

MSc in Computer Science, 2009—2012

School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering
Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana

BSc in Computer Science, 1999—2003

Trine University, Angola, Indiana

Patents

Systems and Methods for Vehicular Safety Control

Patent No.: 12,466,443
Date: 2025-11-11
(pdf) (bibtex)

Professional

Mapless AI, Inc., March. 2020—Current

Co-founder
- Systems architecture, perception, and control for automotive active safety.

Uber ATG, Jan. 2018—Feb. 2019

Senior Autonomy Engineer
- Motion planning for urban automated vehicles

Apple, Inc., Jan. 2016—May 2017

Engineer
- Experimental algorithm and software development for autonomous systems

Robert Bosch, LLC, Jan. 2014—Nov. 2015

Research Engineer
- Lead development of motion planning/decision making for automated driving

Robert Bosch, LLC, May 2013—Aug. 2013

Intern
- Collision detection methods for optimization-based vehicle motion planning

TRACLabs, June 2012—Aug. 2012

Intern
- Software toolkits for coordinated dual-arm manipulation

Indiana University, Sept. 2006—Sept. 2009

Web Developer, School of Journalism
- Development of school web site and internal web-based applications

Software Developer, March 2004—Sept. 2006

Independent
- Software development for small to mid-sized clients

Publications

The Colliding Reciprocal Dance Problem: A Mitigation Strategy with Application to Automotive Active Safety Systems

American Control Conference (ACC) 2020
Jeffrey Kane Johnson
(pdf) (bibtex) (slides) (presentation)

Safe Motion Planning under Partial Observability with an Optimal Deterministic Planner

American Control Conference (ACC) 2020
Jeffrey Kane Johnson
(pdf) (bibtex) (slides) (presentation)

Visual Servoing for Mobile Ground Navigation

IEEE Connected and Automated Vehicles Symposium (CAVS) 2018
Jeffrey Kane Johnson
(pdf) (poster) (bibtex)

On the Relationship Between Dynamics and Complexity in Multi-agent Collision Avoidance

Autonomous Robots (AURO)
Jeffrey Kane Johnson
(pre-print pdf) (published version) (bibtex)

Guest talk: Vision-based Navigation for Autonomous Vehicles

Intelligent & Interactive Systems Talk Series
Jeffrey Kane Johnson
(Video) (Slides)

Image Space Potential Fields: Constant Size Environment Representation for Vision-based Subsumption Control Architectures

Maeve Automation Technical Report 1
Jeffrey Kane Johnson
(pdf) (bibtex)

Encroachment Detection with Monocular Vision for Small, Low-cost, Compute-constrained Platforms

IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) 2017
Abstract Only
Jeffrey Kane Johnson
(pdf) (poster) (bibtex)

Selective Determinism for Autonomous Navigation in Multi-agent Systems

Ph.D. Dissertation
Jeffrey Kane Johnson
(pdf) (slides) (bibtex)

Constant Space Complexity Environment Representation for Vision-based Navigation

IROS 2017 9th Workshop on Planning, Perception and Navigation for Intelligent Vehicles
Jeffrey Kane Johnson
(pdf) (poster) (slides) (bibtex)

A Novel Relationship Between Dynamics and Complexity in Multi-agent Collision Avoidance

Robotics: Science and Systems (RSS) 2016
Jeffrey Kane Johnson
(pdf) (slides) (poster) (bibtex)

Identifying Support Surfaces of Climbable Structures from 3D Point Clouds

IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2014
Anna Eilering, Victor Yap, Jeff Johnson, Kris Hauser
(pdf) (bibtex)

Optimal Longitudinal Control Planning with Moving Obstacles

IEEE Intelligent Vehicles Symposium (IV) 2013
Jeff Johnson, Kris Hauser
(pdf) (web) (slides) (bibtex)

Optimal Longitudinal Control Planning with Moving Obstacles

ICRA 2013 Workshop: Vehicle Autonomy in Urban Transportation Systems
Jeff Johnson, Kris Hauser
(pdf) (web) (bibtex)

Minimizing Driver Interference Under a Probabilistic Safety Constraint in Emergency Collision Avoidance Systems

IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Conference (ITSC) 2012
Jeff Johnson, Yajia Zhang, Kris Hauser
(pdf) (slides) (bibtex)

Optimal Acceleration-Bounded Trajectory Planning in Dynamic Environments Along a Specified Path

IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2012
Jeff Johnson, Kris Hauser
(pdf) (web) (slides) (bibtex)

Semiautonomous Longitudinal Collision Avoidance Using a Probabilistic Decision Threshold

IROS 2011 International workshop on Perception and Navigation for Autonomous Vehicles in Human Environment
Jeff Johnson, Yajia Zhang, Kris Hauser
(pdf) (bibtex)