Publications

I am a Researcher in the Robotics, Mechatronics and MBSE group at ITA.
I was formerly a Research Associate in the Robotics, Computer Vision and AI group at the University of Zaragoza.

PhD Thesis

2024
🏆 Finalist for Best PhD Thesis in Robotics in Spain & Portugal

Beyond the Frontiers of Active SLAM: New Methods for Fast and Optimal Decision-Making

Placed, J. A. (Supervised by: Prof. José A. Castellanos)

University of Zaragoza, 2024

Journal Articles

2025

3D Scene Graphs in Robotics: A Unified Representation Bridging Geometry, Semantics, and Action

Catalano, I., Zumaya, C. C., Placed, J. A., Civera, J., Bessa, W. M., & Peña-Queralta, J.

HAL Preprints, 2025

2024

G-loc: Tightly-Coupled Graph Localization with Prior Topo-metric Information

Montano-Oliván, L., Placed, J. A., Montano, L., & Lázaro, M. T.

IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L), vol. 9, no. 11, pp. 9167–9174, 2024

2023

A Survey on Active Simultaneous Localization and Mapping: State of the Art and New Frontiers

Placed, J. A., Strader, J., Carrillo, H., Atanasov, N., Indelman, V., Carlone, L., & Castellanos, J. A.

IEEE Transactions on Robotics (T-RO), vol. 39, no. 3, pp. 1686–1705, 2023

A General Relationship Between Optimality Criteria and Connectivity Indices for Active Graph-SLAM

Placed, J. A., & Castellanos, J. A.

IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L), vol. 8, no. 2, pp. 816–823, 2023

2020

A Deep Reinforcement Learning Approach for Active SLAM

Placed, J. A., & Castellanos, J. A.

Applied Sciences, vol. 10, no. 23, p. 8386, 2020

Conference & Workshop Publications

2026

Rheos: Modelling Continuous Motion Dynamics in Hierarchical 3D Scene Graphs

Catalano, I., Verdoja, F., Civera, J., Peña-Queralta, J., & Placed, J. A.

Accepted for publication in the 2026 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), Pittsburgh, USA

Topology-Aware Decision Making for Multi-Session Localization and Mapping

Montano-Oliván, L., Placed, J. A., Montano, L., & Lázaro, M. T.

Accepted for publication in the 2026 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), Pittsburgh, USA

Massive Parallel Deep Reinforcement Learning for Active SLAM

Llobera, M. A., Placed, J. A., De Paula, M., & De Cristóforis, P.

Preprint: arXiv:2603.25834, 2026

When to Map? Adaptive Switching Between Localization and SLAM in Multi-Session Systems

Montano-Oliván, L., Placed, J. A., Montano, L., & Lázaro, M. T.

1st Workshop on Long-term Deployments in the Wild
2026 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), Vienna, Austria

Aion: Towards Hierarchical 4D Scene Graphs with Temporal Flow Dynamics

Catalano, I., Montijano, E., Civera, J., Placed, J. A., & Peña-Queralta, J.

2026 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), Vienna, Austria

2025

Towards the Deployment of an Autonomous Scaling Machine in Underground Mines

Montano-Oliván, L., Hakonen-Milosevic, K., Placed, J. A., Friman, E., Montano, L., et al.

European Conference on Mobile Robots (ECMR), Padova, Italy, 2025, pp. 1-8

2024

From Underground Mines to Offices: A Versatile and Robust Framework for Range-Inertial SLAM

Montano-Oliván, L., Placed, J. A., Montano, L., & Lázaro, M. T.

7th Iberian Robotics Conference (ROBOT), Madrid, Spain, 2024, pp. 1–8

2022

ExplORB-SLAM: Active Visual SLAM Exploiting the Pose-graph Topology

Placed, J. A., Rodríguez, J. J. G., Tardós, J. D., & Castellanos, J. A.

5th Iberian Robotics Conference (ROBOT), Zaragoza, Spain, 2022, pp. 199–210

Enough is Enough: Towards Autonomous Uncertainty-Driven Stopping Criteria

Placed, J. A., & Castellanos, J. A.

11th IFAC Symposium on Intelligent Autonomous Vehicles (IAV): Prague, Czech Republic, 2022

2021

Fast Autonomous Robotic Exploration Using the Underlying Graph Structure

Placed, J. A., & Castellanos, J. A.

2021 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), Prague, Czech Republic, pp. 6672-6679

2019
🏆 Best Poster Award

Active SLAM via Deep Reinforcement Learning

Placed, J. A., & Castellanos, J. A.

Workshop on Fast Neural Perception and Learning for Intelligent Vehicles and Robotics
2019 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), Macau, China