Connected Robotics and multi-robot coordination
I study how robots with different capabilities, IoT sensors, and edge AI can understand their environment and act together. Building on heterogeneous task allocation and robot coordination in manufacturing and disaster response, I investigate distributed reasoning through shared evidence and uncertainty. The goal is coordinated action that remains explainable to people under partial observations, changing conditions, and communication constraints.
Shared semantic world models and edge AI
I develop semantic representations that connect sensor observations and CAD geometry with object meanings and spatial or functional relationships. Research on industrial 3D scene graphs and knowledge acquisition from sparse observations supports this direction. I investigate shared world models that retain evidence provenance and uncertainty, together with interpretable reasoning using small language models on edge devices, linking perception to robot decisions.
Distributed sensing and disaster or infrastructure inspection
I investigate autonomous inspection through cooperation between mobile robots and IoT devices. This includes robot-deployed sensors, adaptive observation planning, and task allocation across heterogeneous teams. Building on industrial plant inspection at the World Robot Summit, I aim to develop systems that respond to occlusion and environmental changes, support parallel inspection, and reduce the workload and exposure of human operators in disaster response and infrastructure maintenance.
Bezerra, R., Tadokoro, S., and Ohno, K. (2026). AI-IoT-Robotics Integration: Survey of Frameworks, Emerging Trends, and the Path Toward Connected Robotics. IEEE Internet of Things Journal. https://doi.org/10.1109/JIOT.2026.3670191
Walus, N. P., Bezerra, R., et al. (2025). Semantic Enrichment of CAD-Based Industrial Environments via Scene Graphs for Simulation and Reasoning. IEEE SSRR 2025. https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.06415
Bezerra, R., Ohno, K., et al. (2023). Heterogeneous Multi-Robot Task Allocation for Garment Transformable Production using Deep Reinforcement Learning. IEEE CASE 2023. https://doi.org/10.1109/CASE56687.2023.10260437
Kojima, S., Takahashi, T., Bezerra, R., et al. (2022). Heterogeneous robots coordination for industrial plant inspection and evaluation at World Robot Summit 2020. Advanced Robotics, 36(21), 1102-1119.
https://doi.org/10.1080/01691864.2022.2111230
Bezerra Neto, R. P., Ohno, K., et al. (2021). Knowledge Acquisition from Pedestrian Flow Analysis using Sparse Mobile Probe Data. Journal of Intelligent & Robotic Systems, 102, 85. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10846-021-01419-w
I received my Ph.D. in Information Sciences from Tohoku University in 2021. After serving as a research fellow (2021-2022) and specially appointed assistant professor (2022-2026) at the Tough Cyberphysical AI Research Center, I became an assistant professor in the Department of Robotics in 2026. I serve as Publication Co-Chair of IEEE SSRR 2026 and Co-Chair of the IEEE RAS Technical Committee on Safety, Security and Rescue Robotics (from 2026).