CKSRI Seminar Series 2023 "Towards Closed-Loop Intelligence for Versatile Aerial Robots"
Abstract: As the perception, planning, and coordination technology going mature, autonomous robots are given higher expectations by people. Aerial robots, and their swarms, now are required not only to fly out of laboratory, but also to finish more complicated tasks. To this end, building smarter drones with sophisticated functionalities where perception and planning modules are coordinated or even coupled is an attractive research topic. In this talk, I will introduce some new methods of aerial robots developed in my group, by which we may broaden the application range and intelligence level of drones. Then, based on real-world requirements, some systematic solutions for specific tasks are presented, where the architecture, algorithms, engineering considerations, as well as closed-loop performances, are explained. Finally, I will turn to some of our most recent research, on which we are working towards a perception-planning coupled, flexibly coordinated, and large-scale aerial swarm system.
Fei Gao is a tenured associate professor at the Department of Control Science and Engineering, Zhejiang University, where he works as the deputy-director and the technical leader of the Field Autonomous System and Computing (FAST) Laboratory, and leads the Flying Autonomous Robotics (FAR) group. He also works as PI for the Center of Autonomous Navigation of Swarm Robotics in Huzhou Institute, Zhejiang University. Fei Gao received his Ph.D. in Electronic and Computer Engineering from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in 2019, and his B.Eng. degree in Automation from Zhejiang University in 2015. His research interests include aerial robots, swarm robots, autonomous navigation, motion planning, and localization and mapping. As the first or corresponding author, he has published over 50 prestigious papers in Robotics, including ICRA, IROS, ISER, ISRR, RAL, JFR, TRO, and Science Robotics. He is also the recipient of the IEEE-TRO 2020 King-Sun Fu Best Paper Award Honorable Mention, the IEEE-SSRR 2016 best paper award, the IEEE/RSJ IROS 2021 best Application Paper Finalist, and the Outstanding Candidate Award of 2022 DAMO Academy Young Fellow. His research has been reported multiple times by mainstream technology media, such as Times, AAAS, IEEE Spectrum and Science.