Jake Welde

Jake Welde

Assistant Professor, working in robotics at the intersection of geometry, design, and control.

Publications

An up-to-date list of publications can also be found on my Google Scholar page. ( * indicates equal contribution.)

Journal

  1. "Almost Global Asymptotic Trajectory Tracking for Fully-Actuated Mechanical Systems on Homogeneous Riemannian Manifolds",
    Jake Welde and Vijay Kumar.
    IEEE Control Systems Letters (L-CSS), 2024.
  2. "A Compositional Approach to Certifying Almost Global Asymptotic Stability of Cascade Systems",
    Jake Welde, Matthew D. Kvalheim, and Vijay Kumar.
    IEEE Control Systems Letters (L-CSS), 2023.
  3. "Dynamically Feasible Task Space Planning for Underactuated Aerial Manipulators",
    Jake Welde, James Paulos, and Vijay Kumar.
    IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L), 2021.
    Best Paper Finalist (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles), ICRA 2021.
  4. "Autonomous Flight for Detection, Localization, and Tracking of Moving Targets With a Small Quadrotor",
    Justin Thomas, Jake Welde, Giuseppe Loianno, Kostas Daniilidis, and Vijay Kumar.
    IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L), 2017.

Conference

  1. "Learning Flatness-Preserving Residuals for Pure-Feedback Systems",
    Fengjun Yang, Jake Welde, and Nikolai Matni.
    IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC) - Accepted, 2025.
  2. "Leveraging Symmetry to Accelerate Learning of Trajectory Tracking Controllers for Free-Flying Robotic Systems",
    Jake Welde*, Nishanth Rao*, Pratik Kunapuli*, Dinesh Jayaraman, and Vijay Kumar.
    IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2025.
    Best Contribution (Neuroscience & Interpretability), NeurReps Workshop @ NeurIPS 2024.
  3. "Leveling the Playing Field: Carefully Comparing Classical and Learned Controllers for Quadrotor Trajectory Tracking",
    Pratik Kunapuli, Jake Welde, Dinesh Jayaraman, and Vijay Kumar.
    Robotics: Science and Systems (RSS), 2025.
  4. "The Role of Symmetry in Constructing Geometric Flat Outputs for Free-Flying Robotic Systems",
    Jake Welde, Matthew D. Kvalheim, and Vijay Kumar.
    IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2023.
  5. "Trajectory Planning for the Bidirectional Quadrotor as a Differentially Flat Hybrid System",
    Katherine Mao, Jake Welde, M. Ani Hsieh, and Vijay Kumar.
    IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2023.
  6. "Coordinate-Free Dynamics and Differential Flatness of a Class of 6DOF Aerial Manipulators",
    Jake Welde and Vijay Kumar.
    IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2020.

Workshop (non-archival)

  1. "Geometric Methods of Systematic Controller Synthesis for Underactuated Robotic Systems",
    Jake Welde.
    RSS Pioneers, Robotics: Science and Systems (RSS), 2024.
  2. "Towards Automatic Identification of Globally Valid Geometric Flat Outputs via Numerical Optimization",
    Jake Welde and Vijay Kumar.
    Geometric Representations Workshop, International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2023.

Thesis

  1. "Geometric Methods for Efficient and Explainable Control of Underactuated Robotic Systems",
    Jake Welde.
    PhD Thesis, University of Pennsylvania, 2025.