Lecturer awarded Royal Academy of Engineering Industrial Fellowship

A Senior Lecturer of Robotics and Autonomous Systems at the School of Engineering has been awarded a fellowship from the Royal Academy of Engineering for his work with industry.

Dr Ze Ji has been announced as one of the recipients of an Industrial Fellowship from the Royal Academy of Engineering. The scheme provides experienced academic researchers with the opportunity to focus on full-time research for up to two years.

Ze’s research focus is on the area of enhanced robot cognitive capability. He is the group leader of Robotics and Autonomous Intelligent Machines (RAIM) and Theme Leader of the Centre for Artificial Intelligence, Robotics and Human-Machine Systems (IROHMS).

During his fellowship, Dr Ji will undertake a collaborative research project with industrial partner Spirent Communications. Entitled, ‘Active Perception and Learning for Autonomous Navigation’, the project will explore the autonomous navigation of robots in unknown and unstructured environments.

The unreliability of autonomous navigation impedes the deployment of high-level autonomy in different environments, particularly during safety-critical tasks. Together with Spirent Communications, Dr Ji will explore a framework that will enhance autonomous navigation, making it more flexible and adaptive to different working environments. Using machine learning algorithms, the framework will support robot perception and interpretation of the environment enabling optimal decisions and enhanced performance.

This project will accelerate our already established collaborative research with leading technology developer Spirent Communications and strengthen the strategic relationship between industry and Cardiff University.

Cardiff University has invested significantly in state-of-the-art laboratories and the IROHMS research centre to enhance our capability in the area of robotics and artificial intelligence.