Abstract:
Autonomous marine robots have witnessed a fast advance in recent years thanks to the exciting progresses in artificial intelligence (AI), advanced sensory technologies and robust decision-making systems. Major high-impact applications of marine robots can be seen in offshore windfarm inspections, search and rescue, seabed mapping and etc. The core of achieving high-level autonomy for marine robots is the autonomous navigation system that consists of sensing/perception, planning/decision-making and automatic control. This talk will therefore be focusing on the recent works of developing advanced autonomy technologies for marine robots at UCL. Key content include: 1) reliable semantic segmentation on water surface, 2) efficient multi-constraint planning for surface vessels, 3) reinforcement learning powered multi-task allocation and 4) adversarial networks enabled maritime systems.
Bio:
Dr Yuanchang Liu is the Lecturer in Autonomy at University College London (UCL) since 2018, and a recognised expert in robotics with expertise in perception, planning and control that enables mobile robots to achieve robust autonomy in complex physical environments. Dr Liu received MSc degree in Power Systems Engineering, and PhD degree in Mechanical Engineering, both from UCL in 2011 and 2016, respectively. Dr Liu has secured nine research grants as PI/Co-PI from prestigious funding agencies including EU, Royal Society and Lloyds Register Foundation with a specific research interest in marine robotics systems. Dr Liu has over 60 high-impact publications with over 1100 citations (H-index: 15), including in prestigious robotics journals/conferences (JFR, IEEE T-ASE, IROS and etc.), and won 5 awards/prizes from IEEE, Society of Maritime Industries and UK & Ireland Robotics and Autonomous Systems (RAS) Society.