Kento Tomita

Kento Tomita
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.

  • Recent News & Events

    •  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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  • MERL Publications

    •  Kento, T., Elango, P., Vinod, A.P., Di Cairano, S., Weiss, A., "Powered Descent Decision Making: A Reachability-Steering Approach", AIAA SciTech Forum, January 2026.
      BibTeX TR2026-014 PDF
      • @inproceedings{Kento2026jan,
      • author = {Kento, Tomita 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,
      • url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2026-014}
      • }