Brief bio

Huihuan Qian received his Ph.D. in Automation and Computer-Aided Engineering from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and thereafter worked as a Research Assistant Professor there. He is currently an Associate Professor at the School of Science and Engineering in the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen.

His research interests include design and control of robots and intelligent system, and currently focus on marine surface robotics. He has published 2 monographs, 1 edited book, and 140 papers in international journal and conferences, and awarded over 35 patents. He has received the Best Paper Award from IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics in 2011 with his colleagues, based on the research of steering interface for omni-directional vehicles. With his postgraduate/undergraduate students, he has received a number of awards, including IROS2020 Best Paper Award on Robot Mechanisms and Design, IROS2020 Best Application Paper Finalist, ROBIO2019 Best Paper Finalist, RCAR2019 Best Paper Finalist, etc. He serves as Vice Chair at Guangzhou Section Chapter for IEEE Robotics and Automation Society, an Associate Editor in ICRA and IROS, and was an Area Chair in RSS.
 

TALK TITLE 

Intelligent sailing robots towards long-range voyaging

ABSTRACT

For the continuously increasing need in marine surface exploration, intelligent robots with long-voyaging capability is crucial to reduce risk to human participants and increase efficiency. Sailing robots can utilize abundant wind in ocean and is able to reach very remote locations. This talk will present our effort in intelligent sailing robots at different scales, from perspectives in motion control, energy management and risk avoidance. Starting from small-size sailboats in an indoor controlled wind field, we model the propelling thrust by force polar diagram, and control the robot to enhance its mobility. To explore for long-range capability, we extend research effort to a large-size sailboat OceanVoy310, adopted and enhanced V-stability based control and reduce the control frequency to save energy, while keeping the path tracking error acceptable. In risk avoidance, we consider obstacles on surface, as well as wakes generated from boats nearby. Safety zones are investigated to prevent collision, and Dubins paths are studied to steer the sailboat away promptly from wakes. Over 1200km experiment in marine is accumulated for OceanVoy310.