Mitchell Cohen

I am completing my Ph.D in robotic perception at McGill University under the supervision of Professor James Forbes in the DECAR research group. Broadly, my research interests are in the areas of robotic state estimation, simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM), computer vision, and optimization, with a focus on improving navigation techniques for robots. My current research focuses on the fusion of camera and inertial data to perform SLAM. Specifically, I am interested in developing consistent and efficient algorithms for visual-inertial navigation, to enable reliable, long-term autonomy for robotic systems.

I also received a Master’s in Mechanical Engineering in 2020 from McGill University, where I focused on developing novel control and state estimation algorithms for both fixed-wing and multirotor UAVs.

selected publications

IROS

Observability and Consistency Analysis for Visual-Inertial Navigation with Anchored Feature Parameterizations

Mitchell Cohen, Vassili Korotkine, and James Richard Forbes

In IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) (to appear), 2026

arXiv Bib PDF

@inproceedings{cohen2026observability,
  title = {Observability and Consistency Analysis for Visual-Inertial Navigation with Anchored Feature Parameterizations},
  booktitle = {IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) (to appear)},
  author = {Cohen, Mitchell and Korotkine, Vassili and Forbes, James Richard},
  year = {2026},
}

RA-L/IROS

Know What You Don’t Know: Consistency in Sliding Window Filtering with Unobservable States Applied to Visual-Inertial SLAM

Daniil Lisus, Mitchell Cohen, and James Richard Forbes

IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, 2023

arXiv Bib PDF

@article{lisus2023know,
  title = {Know What You Don't Know: Consistency in Sliding Window Filtering with Unobservable States Applied to Visual-Inertial SLAM},
  author = {Lisus, Daniil and Cohen, Mitchell and Forbes, James Richard},
  journal = {IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters},
  volume = {8},
  number = {6},
  pages = {3382--3389},
  year = {2023},
  publisher = {IEEE},
}

RA-L/IROS

Finite-Horizon LQR Control of Quadrotors on SE_2 (3)

Mitchell R Cohen, Khairi Abdulrahim, and James Richard Forbes

IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, 2020

arXiv Bib PDF

@article{cohen2020finite,
  title = {{Finite-Horizon LQR Control of Quadrotors on $ SE\_2 (3) $}},
  author = {Cohen, Mitchell R and Abdulrahim, Khairi and Forbes, James Richard},
  journal = {IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters},
  volume = {5},
  number = {4},
  pages = {5748--5755},
  year = {2020},
  publisher = {IEEE},
}