Dr Ze Ji

Senior lecturer
Teaching and research

School of Engineering

: jiz1@cardiff.ac.uk
: +44 (0)29 2087 0017
: Room C/1.08, Queen's Buildings - South Building, 5 The Parade, Newport Road, Cardiff, CF24 3AA

: Available for postgraduate supervision

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I maintain my personal website externally.

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I am awarded the Royal Academy of Engineering Industrial Fellowship.

I am a senior lecturer of Robotics and Autonomous Systems at the School of Engineering, Cardiff University, and the Group leader of Robotics and Autonomous Intelligent Machines (RAIM). I am also the co-investigator/theme leader of the IROHMS (Research Centre for AI, Robotics and Human Machine Systems) funded by ERDF through WEFO.

I am the associate editor of the Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Part C: Journal of Mechanical Engineering Science and IEEE Access

I am managing the Robotics and Autonomous Systems Laboratory, which provides cutting-edge robotic facilities, including two Kuka Lbr iiwa robots, Robotnik Vogue, three Kuka youbots, some turtlebots, some drones, advanced vision systems (3D cameras, etc), and sensors. We have also built two USVs (unmanned surface vehicles) with student projects in the past years.

I have held multiple positions as a robotics and autonomous systems researcher and engineer in both academia and industry (Dyson, Lenovo, and Autonomous Surface Vehicles). My PhD was sponsored as part of the EU FP6 project, TAI- CHI (Tangible Acoustic Interfaces for Computer Human Interaction), which won the best exhibit prize of EU FP6 exhibition in Helsinki, Finland, in 2006.

I have broad experience in robotics, including indoor mobile robots, industrial robot manipulators, humanoid robots, and outdoor unmanned autonomous surface vehicles. My research is primarily focused on Robot Perception And Learning (RoPAL), covering a broad range of subjects, including simulataneous localisation and mapping (SLAM), robot vision, robot reinforcement learning, tactile sensing, deep learning, smart sensing, and their applications on autonomous robot navigation, manipulation and, more broadly, smart manufacturing.

At Dyson, as a robotics systems engineer, I have filed and published patents in the area of mobile robotics. The main project there was the Dyson 360 robot, which utilises a 360 camera for indoor localisation and mapping (Visual SLAM). I worked at Lenovo on service robotics, as a Robotic Systems Architect and Technical Leader of a team of 10 researchers and engineers with background of machine learning, computer vision, slam, cloud, and IoT. At ASV (Autonomous Surface Vehicles), I have successfully, as a core research member, delivered several projects funded by innovate UK, DSTL, and NOC/SBRI. Before these, I had been working as a research fellow in academia for a number of EU FP6 & FP7 projects, such as TAI-CHI, IWARD (Intelligent Robot Swarm for Attendance, Recognition, Cleaning, and Delivery), ROBOSKIN (Skin-based technologies and capabilities for safe, autonomous and interactive robots), and SRS (Multi-Role Shadow Robotic System for Independent Living).

Here is the group Github account for projects carried out with our RoPAL team.

Education

2007: PhD (Systems Engineering) Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK
2003: MSc (Computer Science) University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK
2001: BEng (Electronic Engineering), Jilin University, China

Honours and awards

Won the best Exhibit for the EU FP6 project TAI-CHI "Tangible Acoustic Interface for Human Computer Interaction" in EC IST Exhibition, Helsinki, Finland, 2006
Best paper award, TAROS, Bristol, 2018
Second Prize in the International Marine Vehicle Design and Construction Invitational Contest 2019, Harbin, China

Professional memberships

Member of IEEE
Member of the British Machine Vision Association (BMVA)
Fellow of The Higher Education Academy (FHEA)
Member of The Society of Research Software Engineering

Academic positions

2020 - present: Senior Lecturer of robotics and autonomous systems, Cardiff University
2016 - 2020: Lecturer of robotics and autonomous systems, Cardiff University
2014 - 2016: Unmanned Systems Engineer (R&D), ASV ltd
2013 - 2014: Robotics Systems Engineer (R&D), Dyson Ltd
2009 - 2011: Research Fellow, Adaptive System Research Group, University of Hertfordshire
2007 - 2013: Research Fellow, Cardiff University

Speaking engagements

Invited keynote talk at the IEEE ISRIMT (The 3rd international symposium on Robotics and Intelligent Manufacturing Technology) 2021 conference organised by Hohai University, China.
Invited talk at University of Essex 16 December 2020
Organised and chaired the Invited Special Session of “AI, Robotics and HMS (IROHMS) for Smart Manufacturing” at the KES 2020 conference 17 Sep 2020
Interviewed by BBC Radio Wales - Science Cafe (https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000l14c). 21 July 2020
Invited Speaker at CoInnovate, Cardiff (http://coinnovate.co.uk/speakers/), 24 Jan 2018
Invited talk at Jilin University, ChangChun, China, May 2017
Research Colloquium, University of Hertfordshire, Giving Objects the Sense of Touch: A novel tangible interface based on acoustic localization techniques, 28 Oct 2009

Committees and reviewing

Associate Editor of Robotics and Autonomous Systems section of the “Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Part C (JMES)” (since 2021)
Technical Program Committee of the IEEE ISRIMT 2021 (The 3rd international symposium on Robotics and Intelligent Manufacturing Technology) conference organised by Hohai University, China.
Regional chair and session chair of IEEE ICCSE 2021
Associate Editor of IEEE Access (since 2020)
International Programme Committee of KES 2021 conference
Reviewer of several international journals, including
- IEEE Sensors Journal,
- IEEE Transactions on Robotics
- IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering
- IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems
- IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RAL)
- Journal of Field Robotics
- Robotics and Computer-Integrated Manufacturing
- Measurement Science and Technology,

and reviewers for several major conferences, including ICRA, IROS, CASE etc

We are currently unable to retrieve the list of publications. Visit our institutional repository.

2019-2022

EN3062 Robotics and Image Processing (Module leader)
EN4062 Advanced Robotics (Module leader)
EN4110 Mechatronics Design

2018-2019

EN4110 Mechatronics Design
EN3062 Robotics and Image Processing
EN4062 Advanced Robotics
ENT604 Measurement Systems (Module Leader)

2017-2018

EN4100 Mechatronics Design
EN4062 Advanced Robotics
ENT604 Measurement Systems (Module Leader)

2016-2017

EN4100 Mechatronics Design
ENT604 Measurement Systems
Others, including Design and Lab

We envisage an enhanced robot cognitive capability through deploying advanced multi-modal perceptual capabilities from sensors of vision, tactile, lidar, etc, and continuous self-learning to understand the environment in 3D, predict situations via machine/deep learning, and support humans for real-world problems. We aim to endow a higher level of autonomy to robots and unmanned systems, providing capabilities of advanced situation awareness, multi-modal sensing, robot active learning, localisation and mapping, optimal path planning, and multiple robot collaboration.

My group’s research interests can be loosely divided into the following areas:

Deep Reinforcement Learning for robot navigation and manipulation
State Estimation, e.g. Visual SLAM and Visual Odometry
Sensor-guided autonomous robot navigation and manipulation
Multi-modal robot sensing, such as robot vision, tactile sensing, etc.
Computer Vision and Data-driven learning-based methods for smart manufacturing, including in-situ monitoring, surface 3D metrology, robotic assembly and so on

Contracts

Investigators	Sponsor	Value	Title	Duration
Ze Ji	DTP (EPSRC) (PhD Studentship)		Robot Learning for Manipulation	Oct 2023 - Apr 2027
Ze Ji	Royal Academy of Engineering Industrial Fellowship	50,000	Active Perception and Learning for Autonomous Navigation	Sep 2022 - Sep 2024
Ze Ji, Yukun Lai	EPSRC (New Horizons)	~£250k	PHYDL: Physics-informed Differentiable Learning for Robotic Manipulation of Viscous and Granular Media	Jan 2023 - Dec 2024
Haijiang Li, Abhishek Kundu, Ze Ji (CoI) Industry partners: Centregreat Rail, Crouch Waterfall, Centregreat Engineering)	SmartExpertise	£111,884	DIGIBRIDGE: Physics-informed digital twin supported smart bridge maintenance	Nov 2021 - Dec 2022
Ze Ji	Industry (Spirent) - Full-time PhD studentship	£32,000	Reinforcement Learning for autonomous navigation with GNSS-based localisation	2021 - 2024
Haijiang Li, Ze Ji (Co-I, Knowledge Supervisor), Abhishek Kundu	Innovate UK/KTP	£280,000	BIM and Digital Twins in support of Smart Bridge Structural Surveying	Sep 2021-Sep 2024
Ze Ji	Royal Society	£17,812	Active Robot Learning for Subtractive, Formative, and Additive Manipulations of Granular and Viscous Materials	09 Mar 2020 - 08 Mar 2021
Setchi, R., Ji, Z., (ENGIN) Jones, D., Morgan, P., (PSYCH) Allen, S., Eslambolchilar, P. (COMSC)	ERDF/WEFO	£4,600,000 (including match funding from Cardiff University)	Research Centre in AI, Robotics and Human-Machine Systems (IROHMS)	1 Apr 19 – 1 Sept 23
Bigot, S., Ji, Z., Packianather, M., Kerfriden, P.	EU H2020	€ 476,000	Additive Manufacturing using Metal Pilot Line (MANUELA)	Oct 2018 - Sep 2022
Setchi, R., Ji, Z., Evans, S.	Endevr/Airbus	£61,000	Deep Learning Enabled Wing Box Inspection (DEWI)	1 Jul 19 – 30 Sep 19
Ji Z (PI), Setchi R, Bigot S	Renishaw and Cardiff University Strategic Fund	£39,986	3D characterisation of ALM processes	01 Apr 2019 - 31 Mar 2020
Ji Z (PI), Wu J, Setchi R.	Renishaw and Cardiff University Strategic Fund	£40,000 cash funding from the strategic partnership fund (total project value: £101,332)	Pushing the boundary of vision-based 3D surface imaging	01 Apr 2018 - 31 Mar 2019
Setchi R., Ji Z.	WEFO through ASTUTE and Industry	£884,673 including £652,661 from Continental and £232,012 from WEFO	Additive Manufacturing and Robotics to Support Improved Response to Increased Flexibility	02 Feb 2018 – 01 Feb 19

Research Areas

Robot Reinforcement Learning:

Reinforcement Learning is a new emerging area that paves a new direction to allow robots to learn new skills for situations when hand-coding is not suitable.

The current work aims to research and develop a self-learning system for a robot to manipulate objects in cluttered workspace for tasks that require multiple steps.

Watch a video of the research on YouTube

The following video shows the work of using Reinforcement Learning to train a robot to navigate and avoid collision.

Watch the video of the research on YouTube

Mobile Robots:

One of my most valuable experience in this area is the work on the Dyson 360 Robot project. My interests include Robot Autonomous Navigation, Visual SLAM, Visual Servoing, and Vision Odometry

Watch a video of the research on YouTube

Another project is the EU FP7 project, SRS, which focused on the development and prototyping of remotely-controlled, semi-autonomous robotic solutions in domestic environments to support elderly people.

SRS project (Service Robot)

Autonomous Vehicles:

As part of my teaching activities (Mechatronics module), I led a few team of students in the past years to build USVs (Unmanned Surface Vehicle) and UAVs.

Watch a video of the research on YouTube

Related research includes robot behaviours, such as computer vision and sensor fusion for collision avoidance, vehicle collaboration, situation awareness and action planning.

Sensing (Acoustic Localisation for Human Computer Interaction):

This is my very early research for my PhD project, which is part of a EU FP6 project, "Tangible Acoustic Interfaces for Computer Human Interaction".

Tactile Sensing and Human Robot Interaction:

This is also my early research working as a research fellow for the EU FP7 project, RoboSkin, developing machine learning algorithms for recognising the types of human touch using large scale tactile sensors.

I am interested in supervising PhD students in the areas of:

Robot Learning (Deep Reinforcement Learning)
State Estimation for autonomous navigation, e.g. SLAM, VO
Robotic Perception / Sensing / Visual Servoing for grasping and manipulation
Computer Vision / 3D Imaging
Tactile Sensing

Current Supervision

Current PhD students at Cardiff University:

Xintong Yang (2019 - ): Deep Reinforcement Learning for task-oriented object manipulation
Feiqiang Lin (2019 - ): Deep Reinforcement Learning for fail-safe localisation navigation
Prasad Rayamane (2019 - ): Optical Tactile Sensing for manipulation
Yan Gao (2020 - ): Deep Reinforcement Learning-based autonomous exploration with hierarchical spatial representation
Fraser McGhan (2021 - ): Deep Reinforcement Learning for robust autonomous navigation with GNSS-based localisation
Yixin Chen (2021 - , MPhil): Visual SLAM for autonomous navigation
Boliang Cai (2021 -): Safe Reinforcement Learning for Robotics
(Co-Supervisor) Peter Herbert (2020 - ): Visual SLAM
(Co-Supervisor) Jingwen Sun (2020 - ): Relational-learning for object-level scene representation and navigation

Current MSc/PhD students in collaboration with National University of Colombia:

Mr Juan S. Hernandez Reyes (MSc student): Reinforcement Learning for Robot Navigation

Current MSc students in collaboration with the University of Antwerp:

Ms Daniëlle Jongstra: Learning-based Robot Social Navigation
Mr Wei Wei: Grasping Regions through Learning and Computer Vision Techniques
Mr Kristof Egghe: Robot Manipulation in Clutter with Deep Reinforcement Learning

Current supervision

Areas of expertise

External profiles

Research links

Robotics and Autonomous Intelligent Machines