CS welcomes robotics researcher Wenhao Luo
CS welcomes robotics researcher Wenhao Luo Heading link
This spring, Wenhao Luo joined the computer science department as an assistant professor. Luo’s research interests include robotics, control theory, and artificial intelligence. He is improving interactions between robots and humans, and coordination among multiple robots.
“I create decision-making algorithms that act as the mind of the robots, so they can be enabled to collaborate safely, efficiently, and reliably with each other and with humans,” Luo said.
Prior to joining UIC, Luo was an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, where he co-directed the CS Robotics Lab.
He has two active NSF grants. The first, Harmonious and Safe Coordination of Vehicles with Diverse Human / Machine Autonomy, aims to make roads safer by improving the interactions between human-driven vehicles and automated vehicles. The application of this work could ultimately be extended to coordination between humans and robot systems in manufacturing, warehousing, and healthcare.
His other NSF grant, Adaptive and Resilient Communication-Aware Multi-Robot Coordination, aims to improve coordination for a team of autonomous robots. These include swarms of drones flying and other mobile robots such as ground vehicles.
“We look at enhancing the networking capabilities between the robots through a mobility-communication co-design, so that the robots will maintain the capability of information exchange that is adaptive to their motion, allowing them to effectively collaborate,” Luo said.
Not only will the robots need to communicate where they are in relation to one another to work as a team but they will also be able to respond and reconfigure their formation if any robot team members are lost due to breakage or an adversarial attack.
Luo is happy to be in Chicago and is looking forward to expanding UIC’s impact on robotics research, as well as serving the local community.
This semester, Luo is teaching CS 494, a special topics course in Mobile Robotics. He will set up a robotics lab in the new computer science building on campus, the Computer Design Research and Learning Center, which opens later this year. The lab boasts floor-to-ceiling windows, and Luo will install a motion capture system. He expects to have swarms of 20 to 30 drones and approximately 10 mobile ground robots.
Luo earned his PhD and MS in robotics from Carnegie Mellon University, was a graduate student at Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China, where he studied automation and control, and earned his bachelor’s degree in measurement and control technology from Central South University in Hunan, China. He had two research internships with Microsoft.
Luo is actively seeking motivated students at all levels to join his lab.