Johann Laconte made his debut in research by interacting with the Northern Robotics Laboratory during his studies in computer engineering at Clermont Auvergne University, working on the modeling of lidar sensors. He got his Engineering degree from this university in 2018, along a Master’s degree in robotics. He completed his Ph.D. at Institut Pascal (France) and Laval University (Canada) in 2021 during which he participated in several robotic deployments in unstructured environments, including subarctic forests. This work was awarded the second prize for the best french Ph.D. thesis in robotics. After a six-month postdoc at the Northern Robotics Laboratory (Norlab), he continued his research at the University of Toronto in Mobile Robotics (ASRL).

Since October 2023, he is the recipient of a junior research chair in the robotics department of the French National Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment (INRAE).

His research interests focus on mobile robotics and the interactions between the robot and deformable, ever-changing environments.

Education

• Postdoc (Robotics) - University of Toronto, 2023
• Postdoc (Field Robotics) - Université Laval, 2022
• Ph.D. in Robotics - Clermont Auvergne University, 2021
• M.Sc. in Robotics - Clermont Auvergne University, 2018
• Engineering Degree in Computer Science and Modeling - ISIMA, 2018

Scientific Services

• Co-organizer of the Field Robotics Workshop at ICRA 2024
• Associate Editor for IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS)
• Regular reviewer for international journals and conferences (e.g., ICRA, IROS, RA-L)

Resume

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Publications

1. Gaurier, F., Pierre, C., Laconte, J., & Lenain, R. (2025). Autonomous Navigation Based on Pattern Matching Using 3D Sensors.
2. Deschênes, S.-P., Baril, D., Boxan, M., Laconte, J., Giguère, P., & Pomerleau, F. (2024). Saturation-Aware Angular Velocity Estimation: Extending the Robustness of SLAM to Aggressive Motions. 2024 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 10711–10718.
3. Zhang, Z., Laconte, J., Lisus, D., & Barfoot, T. D. (2024). Prepared for the Worst: A Learning-Based Adversarial Attack for Resilience Analysis of the ICP Algorithm. ArXiv Preprint ArXiv:2403.05666.
4. Dubois, W., Boxan, M., Laconte, J., & Pomerleau, F. (2024). 3D Mapping of Glacier Moulins: Challenges and lessons learned. ArXiv Preprint ArXiv:2404.18790.
5. Dubois, W., Samson, N., Daum, E., Laconte, J., & Pomerleau, F. (2024). Under Pressure: Altimeter-Aided ICP for 3D Maps Consistency. ArXiv Preprint ArXiv:2410.00758.
6. Philippe, F., Laconte, J., Lapray, P.-J., Spisser, M., & Lauffenburger, J.-P. (2024). Collision-Aware Traversability Analysis for Autonomous Vehicles in the Context of Agricultural Robotics. ArXiv Preprint ArXiv:2410.03370.
7. Bras, A., Montanaro, A., Pierre, C., Pradel, M., & Laconte, J. (2024). Toward a Better Understanding of Robot Energy Consumption in Agroecological Applications. ArXiv Preprint ArXiv:2410.07697.
8. Randriamiarintsoa, E., Laconte, J., Mousse, C. O., Thuilot, B., & Aufrère, R. (2024). A Risk-Aware Motion Planning Framework with Nonlinear Risk-Constrained Optimization. 2024 18th International Conference on Control, Automation, Robotics and Vision (ICARCV), 117–124.
9. Gaurier, F., Laconte, J., Iberraken, D., & Lenain, R. (2024). A Comparative Study of Pointcloud-based Row Detection Algorithms in Different Simulated Agricultural Scenes. WORLD FIRA 2023-Forum International De La Robotique Agricole En Action.
10. Courcelle, C., Baril, D., Pomerleau, F., & Laconte, J. (2023). On the Importance of Quantifying Visibility for Autonomous Vehicles Under Extreme Precipitation. Towards Human-Vehicle Harmonization, 3, 239.
11. Vaidis, M., Dubois, W., Guénette, A., Laconte, J., Kubelka Vladimı́r, & Pomerleau, F. (2023). Extrinsic calibration for highly accurate trajectories reconstruction. 2023 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 4185–4192.
12. Randriamiarintsoa, E., Laconte, J., Thuilot, B., & Aufrère, R. (2023). Risk-Aware Navigation for Mobile Robots in Unknown 3D Environments. 2023 IEEE 26th International Conference on Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITSC), 1949–1954.
13. Lisus, D., Laconte, J., Burnett, K., Zhang, Z., & Barfoot, T. D. (2023). Pointing the Way: Refining Radar-Lidar Localization Using Learned ICP Weights. ArXiv Preprint ArXiv:2309.08731.
14. Yoon, D. J., Burnett, K., Laconte, J., Chen, Y., Vhavle, H., Kammel, S., Reuther, J., & Barfoot, T. D. (2023). Need for speed: Fast correspondence-free LiDAR-inertial odometry using doppler velocity. 2023 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 5304–5310.
15. Laconte, J., Lisus, D., & Barfoot, T. D. (2023). Toward Certifying Maps for Safe Registration-Based Localization Under Adverse Conditions. IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters.
16. Laconte, J., Randriamiarintsoa, E., Kasmi, A., Pomerleau, F., Chapuis, R., Debain, C., & Aufrère, R. (2021). Dynamic Lambda-Field: A Counterpart of the Bayesian Occupancy Grid for Risk Assessment in Dynamic Environments. 2021 International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS).
17. Morceaux, J., Laconte, J., Randriamiarintsoa, E., Morell, T., Malaterre, L., Denis, D., Aufrère, R., & Chapuis, R. (2021). Toward a Generalized Risk Assessment Method on Occupancy Grids. IROS 2021: Late Breaking Results.
18. Laconte, J., Kasmi, A., Pomerleau, F., Chapuis, R., Malaterre, L., Debain, C., & Aufrère, R. (2021). A novel occupancy mapping framework for risk-aware path planning in unstructured environments. Sensors, 21(22), 7562.
19. Baril, D., Deschênes, S.-P., Gamache, O., Vaidis, M., LaRocque, D., Laconte, J., Kubelka Vladimı́r, Giguère, P., & Pomerleau, F. (2021). Kilometer-scale autonomous navigation in subarctic forests: challenges and lessons learned. ArXiv Preprint ArXiv:2111.13981.
20. Laconte, J., Kasmi, A., Aufrère, R., Vaidis, M., & Chapuis, R. (2021). A survey of localization methods for autonomous vehicles in highway scenarios. Sensors, 22(1), 247.
21. Laconte, J. (2021). Lambda-Field: a novel framework for risk assessment in occupancy grids [PhD thesis]. Université Clermont Auvergne.
22. Baril, D., Grondin, V., Deschênes, S.-P., Laconte, J., Vaidis, M., Kubelka Vladimı́r, Gallant, A., Giguere, P., & Pomerleau, F. (2020). Evaluation of skid-steering kinematic models for subarctic environments. 2020 17th Conference on Computer and Robot Vision (CRV), 198–205.
23. Kasmi, A., Laconte, J., Aufrere, R., Denis, D., & Chapuis, R. (2020). End-to-end probabilistic ego-vehicle localization framework. IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Vehicles, 6(1), 146–158.
24. Labussière, M., Laconte, J., & Pomerleau, F. (2020). Geometry preserving sampling method based on spectral decomposition for large-scale environments. Frontiers in Robotics and AI, 7, 572054.
25. Kasmi, A., Laconte, J., Aufrère, R., Theodose, R., Denis, D., & Chapuis, R. (2020). An information driven approach for ego-lane detection using lidar and openstreetmap. 2020 16th International Conference on Control, Automation, Robotics and Vision (ICARCV), 522–528.
26. Vaidis, M., Laconte, J., Kubelka Vladimı́r, & Pomerleau, F. (2020). Improving the Iterative Closest Point Algorithm using Lie Algebra. IROS 2020 Workshop: Bringing Geometric Methods to Robot Learning, Optimization and Control.
27. Laconte, J., Deschênes, S.-P., Labussière, M., & Pomerleau, F. (2019). Lidar measurement bias estimation via return waveform modelling in a context of 3D mapping. 2019 International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 8100–8106.
28. Laconte, J., Debain, C., Chapuis, R., Pomerleau, F., & Aufrère, R. (2019). Lambda-Field: A Continuous Counterpart of the Bayesian Occupancy Grid for Risk Assessment. 2019 International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 167–172.