Overview
Perspective graduate students for 2024 please read here - the lab still has one quota!
ShanghaiTech undergraduate students interested in joining the MARS Lab please read here!
The Mobile Autonomous Robotic Systems Lab (MARS Lab) at ShanghaiTech University is dedicated to research on intelligent and novel algorithms, software and also hardware for various robotic applications. It was founded in August 2014 by Prof. Sören Schwertfeger of the School of Information Science and Technology of ShanghaiTech University. The lab is dedicated to excellence in research and teaching in robotics and is part of the STAR Center. If you are interested in joining or visiting the lab, please refer to the respective advertisement on the openings page.
The lab, student and professor offices are all located in the STAR Center. Please find the directions on how to reach the STAR Center here.
News
Success at IROS 2022 and ICRA 2023
The STAR Center has published a total of 13 papers at the 2022 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) and the 2023 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA). The MARS Lab has one paper with the title "Multical: Spatiotemporal Calibration for Multiple IMUs, Cameras and LiDARs" at IROS 2022. It presents a new approach to calibrate multiple heterogenious sensors.
MARS Parties in 2022
Despite the difficult "virus situation" in 2022 the members of the MARS Lab managed to get together and relax at a couple of occasions - here are some impressions.
Defense Dr. Jiawei Hou
On November 22nd, 2022, Dr. Jiawei Hou defended her PhD thesis with the title "Indoor Topological Representation and Topological Graph-Based Path Planning and Map Matching" (PDF). The thesis was supervised by Prof. Sören Schwertfeger. The defense committe consisted of Prof. Laurent Kneip from ShanghaiTech University, Prof. Jiamao Li from Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information Technology, Prof. Hong Lu from Fudan University, Prof. Xinyu Zhang from East China Normal University, and Prof. Hang Zhao from Tsinghua University.
Finalist for the Best Student Paper for Jiadi Cui
The PhD Student Jiadi Cui presented his paper "CP+: Camera Poses Augmentation with Large-scale LiDAR Maps" (ieeexplore) at the 2022 IEEE International Conference on Real-time Computing and Robotics (RCAR), which was held from July 17 to 22, 2022 in Datong, China. For this paper he got the "Finalist for the Best Student Paper" award! Congratulations!
Graduation 2022
In 2022 the MARS Lab under the supervision of Prof. Schwertfeger graduated eight Bachelor students: Bowen Xu, who is now a graduate student in our lab, as well as Fang Chen, Junrui Wang, Xiao Yu, Yizhou Wang, Ruixiang Cao, Zian He and Zeyu Zheng. Congratulations!
Graduation 2021
The 2021 ShanghaiTech graduation ceremony was held in July 2021. Dr. Qingwen Xu graduated from her PhD studies and Zhenpeng He, Haofei Kuang and Yijun Yuan received their master diploma. Furthermore did we celebrate the graduation of the bachelor students Yinjie Li and Chenqian Li, both of which joined our lab as graduate students, as well as Jiaying Du, Haoyun Chen, Yuqing Yao, Yifan Guo, Junyu Diao and Yiren Lu. Congratulations!
Defense Dr. Qingwen Xu
On May 15, 2021, Dr. Qingwen Xu defended her PhD thesis with the title "Fourier-Mellin Transform: From Image Registration to Robot Vision" (PDF: English · Chinese). The thesis was supervised by Prof. Sören Schwertfeger. The defense committe consisted of, Prof. Hong Lu from Fudan University, Prof. Huimin Lu from National University of Defense Technology, Prof. Huan Xie from Tongji University, Prof. Jiamao Li from ShanghaiTech Institute of Microsystem and Information Techology, and Prof. Laurent Kneip from ShanghaiTech University..
Graduation 2020
On July 2020 SIST celebrated its graduating students. In the MARS Lab master students Long Xiaoling and Chen Hongyu as well bachelor students Zhijie Yang (all three in the top left image from left to right), Yi Yang and Zhihao Zhang (both not in the image) successfully finished their robotics thesis and graduated. Congratulations! Shorty after the whole MARS group celebrated with a dinner-KTV-party.
MARS New Years Party
On January 2nd 2020 the MARS Lab held its New Years Party 2020 with hotpot and Werewolf games.
Best Paper Finalist at IEEE ROBIO 2019
The 2019 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Biomimetics (ROBIO) was held in Dali, Yunnan, China, from Dec 6 to 8, 2019. The conference, which will be held in Florence, Italy next year, accepted 403 papers from 739 paper submissions for oral presentations. The ShanghaiTech Automation and Robotics Center (STAR Center) groups of Prof. Sören Schwertfeger and Prof. Andre Rosendo submitted and got accepted 5 papers to ROBIO 2019.
The paper with the title “Furniture Free Mapping using 3D Lidars” by master student Zhenpeng He, PhD student Jiawei Hou and Sören Schwertfeger was awarded as a Best Paper Finalist for ROBIO 2019. In that paper a Simultaneous Localization And Mapping (SLAM) method is described that can automatically segment 3D Laser Scans into walls, furniture, doors (open and closed!) and ground and ceiling to create furniture free 2D and 3D maps. The paper was presented by the master student Zhenpeng He. https://arxiv.org/pdf/1911.00663
PhD Student Jiawei Hou presents paper at ICAR 2019
The MARS Lab PhD Student Jiawei Hou presented our paper "Area Graph: Generation of Topological Maps using the Voronoi Diagram" at the 9th International Conference on Advanced Robotics (ICAR) in Belo Horizonte, Brazil.
Students present at IROS 2019 in Macao
Two MARS Lab students presented papers at the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems conference (IROS) 2019 in Macao.
Haofei Kuang presented the paper: Kuang, H., Q. Xu, X. Long, and S. Schwertfeger, "Pose Estimation for Omni-directional Cameras using Sinusoid Fitting", IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS): IEEE Press, 2019. arXiv
Qingwen Xu presented paper: Chavez, A. Gomez, Q. Xu, C. Atanas Mueller, S. Schwertfeger, and A. Birk, "Adaptive Navigation Scheme for Optimal Deep-Sea Localization Using Multimodal Perception Cues", IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS): IEEE Press, 2019. arXiv
MARS Lab prominently featured in TV documentary
CGTN (China Global Television Network) aired a documentary about "China's AI Revolution", prominently featuring Prof. Schwertfeger, the MARS Lab and ShanghaiTech University. You can see the full video online: https://america.cgtn.com/2019/10/18/big-story-chinas-ai-revolution (MARS Lab coverage starts at 41:30).
Master Student Yijun Yuan in Germany for 3 month
The MARS Lab master student Yijun Yuan went to Würzburg, Germany, for a three month research visit at the University of Würzburg with Prof. Andreas Nüchter. He wil be working on topics of 3D Mapping and SLAM there. The visit is funded by DAAD, the german academic exchange service.
Würzburg Castle