Interactive Systems

A. Aerial Vehicle Carrier

Scope: 

This project investigates a collaboration system with an aerial vehicle carrier (AVC) and small-scale drones. 

Motivation:

Small-scale drones are generally powered by the onboard battery, leading to limited flight endurance.

Approach:

An AVC carries a small-scale drone to a position close to the destination. The drone leaves the AVC and conducts its mission. After finishing, the drone returns to the AVC, and the AVC takes the drone back.

Published papers related to this project:

Z. Shen, G. Zhou, P. Sun, B. LAN, Q. Meng, H. CAO, S. Zhou, J. Shao, H. Huang, Autonomous Aerial Vehicle Carrier and MAV Collaboration: System Design, Trajectory Optimization, and Real-World Implementation, IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2026.

C Zhang, Y L Lam, C M B IP, H. Huang, Dynamic Path Optimization and Nonlinear Model Predictive Control for Autonomous UAV Landings on Mobile Aerial Platforms, Unmanned Systems, 2025.

Z. Shen, G. Zhou, H. Huang, C. Huang, Y. Wang, F.-Y. Wang, Convex Optimization-Based Trajectory Planning for Quadrotors Landing on Aerial Vehicle Carriers, IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Vehicles, 2023.

B. Human-robot interaction

Published papers related to this project: 

M. Liu, G. Zhang, C. Zhang, S.L. Smith, H. Huang, Aerial-Balance-Bench: A Controlled and Reproducible Drone-Ball Balancing Benchmark for Indirect Dynamic Aerial Manipulation, IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, 2026

X. Zhang, G. Zhou, H. Huang, Advancing Eating Intention Inference for Autonomous Feeding Robots With Deep Networks Empowered by Enhanced Attention Mechanism, IEEE Transactions on Human-Machine Systems, 2026

C. Human-vehicle interaction

Published papers related to this project: 

J. Wu, C. Huang, H. Huang, C. Lv, Y. Wang, F.-Y Wang, Recent Advances in Reinforcement Learning-Based Autonomous Driving Behavior Planning: A Survey, Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies, 2024

F. Hasan, H. Huang, Driver Intention & Interaction-Aware Trajectory Forecasting via Modular Multi-Task Learning, IEEE Transactions on Consumer Electronics, 2023. 

C. Huang, H. Huang, J. Zhang, P. Hang, Z. Hu, C. Lv, Human-Machine Cooperative Trajectory Planning and Tracking for Safe Automated Driving, IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems, 2021.

C. Huang, H. Huang, P. Hang, H. Gao, J. Wu, Z. Huang, C. Lv. Personalized Trajectory Planning and Control of Lane-Change Maneuvers for Autonomous Driving, IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, 2021

C. Huang, F. Naghdy, H. Du, H. Huang, Shared control of highly automated vehicles using steer-by-wire systems, IEEE/CAA Journal of Automatica Sinica, 2019

D. Human-wheelchair collaboration

Brief: 

The elderly and disabled people have a strong demand for mobility assistance. Mobility limitations have been reported as increasingly prevalent in elderly people affecting about 35% of people aged 70 and the majority of people over 85 years old. Moreover, according to the data from the World Bank, one billion people, or 15% of the world's population, experience some form of disability. Though caring for the elderly and disabled people as they age and decline in physical and mental functioning may be exhausting and frustrating, it is a responsibility of the entire society. 

Wheelchairs are one of the tools that can play an important role in caring for the elderly and disabled people. Traditional wheelchairs are manually controlled by the users. They are simple, but the users must have the required level of strength and balance to propel themselves in the chair. In contrast, powered wheelchairs offer a range of controls, such as joysticks and touchpads, to move the chair. However, the technologies for existing powered wheelchairs mainly require the hands or even the upper arms of the users to flexibly move so that they can effectively operate the joysticks and touchpads. Undoubtedly, this type of powered wheelchair is unfriendly to people who need mobility assistance but cannot flexibly use their hands and arms. 

Aiming at improving the quality of medical care in terms of mobility assistance for the aforementioned group of people, this project will design and develop an intelligent powered wheelchair that has the following main features. 

1. Autonomy: supporting autonomous navigation and reactively avoiding stationary and moving obstacles. 

2. Advanced assistance: providing torque and force support, which is important to those who can input some control but the strength is insufficient. 

3. Multi-mode input: supporting different means for users to control the wheelchair, which may include but are not limited to voice, eye motion, head movement and brain signal.

E. Multi-agent Systems

Brief: 

UAVs have been widely used in monitoring and surveillance. Our focus is on several key issues: coverage, connectivity, and energy limitation. Where to deploy the UAVs is critical to the system performance. System designers usually expect that the UAVs can have good coverage of the targets of interest, such as humans, vehicles, agriculture sites, etc. When the UAVs form a network, they need to maintain a connected graph for the collaboration purpose. Energy is another important factor influencing the deployment of flying robots since the current commercial ones are mostly powered by limited onboard batteries. Another aspect is to develop algorithms that can assist UAVs to conduct search and rescue missions. There are two fundamental issues in this application: the full coverage of an area of interest and the effective detection of targets. The former aims at constructing a set of trajectories for UAVs so that the revisit time of the area is minimized. The latter requires sensing tools to detect the target accurately. 

UAVs can be a new type of aerial user and can also assist existing access points to serve users. No matter which role they play, wireless communications is the main way to contact other parties. One particular focus is on the deployment of UAV base stations (UAV-BSs) to provide better service to ground users. Security is also of concern. Because of the nature of broadcast and the high probability of line-of-sight with other parties, the wireless communications of UAVs is prone to security issues. Specifically, what is sent by UAVs can be easily overheard by a malicious node, and the information sent to UAVs can also be spoofed (consider how RQ-170 was captured). Therefore, securing UAV communications is a foundation for further applying UAVs in different domains.

Published papers related to this project:

Y. Zhang, Y. Huang, C. Huang, H. Huang, A. Nguyen, Joint Optimization of Deployment and Flight Planning of Multi-UAVs for Long-distance Data Collection from Large-scale IoT Devices, IEEE Internet of Things Journal, 2023.

A. Savkin, H. Huang, Multi-UAV Navigation for Optimized Video Surveillance of Ground Vehicles on Uneven Terrains, IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems, 2023.

H. Huang, A. Savkin, Aerial Surveillance in Cities: When UAVs Take Public Transportation Vehicles, IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering, 2022.

A. Savkin, H. Huang, Navigation of a UAV Network for Optimal Surveillance of a Group of Ground Targets Moving Along a Road, IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems, 2021.

H. Huang, A. Savkin, Navigating UAVs for Optimal Monitoring of Groups of Moving Pedestrians or Vehicles, IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, 2021.

H. Huang, A. Savkin, C. Huang, Decentralised Autonomous Navigation of a UAV Network for Road Traffic Monitoring, IEEE Transactions on Aerospace and Electronic Systems, 2021.

A. Savkin, H. Huang, Navigation of a Network of Aerial Drones for Monitoring a Frontier of a Moving Environmental Disaster Area, IEEE Systems Journal, 2020.

H. Huang, A. Savkin,  Xiaohui Li, Reactive Autonomous Navigation of UAVs for Dynamic Sensing Coverage of Mobile Ground Targets, Sensors, 2020.

H. Huang, A. Savkin,  Reactive 3D deployment of a flying robotic network for surveillance of mobile targets, Computer Networks, 2019.

H. Huang, A. Savkin, An Algorithm of Reactive Collision Free 3D Deployment of Networked Unmanned Aerial Vehicles for Surveillance and Monitoring, IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics, 2019.

A. Savkin, H. Huang, A Method for Optimized Deployment of a Network of Surveillance Aerial Drones, IEEE Systems Journal, 2019.

A. Savkin, H. Huang, Asymptotically Optimal Deployment of Drones for Surveillance and Monitoring, Sensors, 2019.

A. Savkin, H. Huang, Proactive Deployment of Aerial Drones for Coverage over Very Uneven Terrains: A Version of the 3D Art Gallery Problem, Sensors, 2019.

M. Lyu, Y. Zhao, C. Huang, H. Huang, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles for Search and Rescue: A Survey, Remote Sensing, 2023.

A. Savkin, H. Huang,  Asymptotically Optimal Path Planning for Ground Surveillance by a Team of UAVs, IEEE Systems Journal, 2021.

J. Zhang, H. Huang, Occlusion-Aware UAV Path Planning for Reconnaissance and Surveillance, Drones, 2021.

H. Huang, A. Savkin,  Deployment of Heterogeneous UAV Base Stations for Optimal Quality of Coverage, IEEE Internet of Things Journal. 2022.

A. Savkin, H. Huang, Range-based reactive deployment of autonomous drones for optimal coverage in disaster areas, IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics: Systems, 2021.

H. Huang, A. Savkin, M. Ding, M. A. Kaafar, Optimized deployment of drone base station to improve user experience in cellular networks, Journal of Network and Computer Applications, 2019.

H. Huang, A. Savkin, A Method for Optimized Deployment of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles for Maximum Coverage and Minimum Interference in Cellular Networks. IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics, 2019.

H. Huang, A. Savkin, An Algorithm of Efficient Proactive Placement of Autonomous Drones for Maximum Coverage in Cellular Networks, IEEE Wireless Communications Letters, 2018.

A. Savkin, H. Huang, Deployment of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Base Stations for Optimal Quality of Coverage, IEEE Wireless Communications Letters, 2018.

H. Huang, M. Eskandari, A. Savkin, W. Ni, Energy-Efficient Joint UAV Secure Communication and 3D Trajectory Optimization Assisted by Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces in the Presence of Eavesdroppers, Defence Technology, 2022.

H. Huang, A. Savkin, W. Ni, Decentralized Navigation of a UAV Team for Collaborative Covert Eavesdropping on a Group of Mobile Ground Nodes, IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering, 2022

H. Huang, A. Savkin, W. Ni, Navigation of a UAV Team for Collaborative Eavesdropping on Multiple Ground Transmitters, IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, 2021

H. Huang, A. Savkin, Energy-Efficient Decentralized Navigation of a Team of Solar-powered UAVs for Collaborative Eavesdropping on a Mobile Ground Target in Urban Environments, Ad Hoc Networks, 2021.

A. Savkin, H. Huang, W. Ni, Securing UAV Communication in the Presence of Stationary or Mobile Eavesdroppers via Online 3D Trajectory Planning, IEEE Wireless Communications Letters, 2020.

F. Autonomous systems interacting with the world

This project involves some designs on UAV interacting with animals. The first work is about shark attack protection, the second work is about wild animal monitoring, and the third is about the herding of animals.

Shark attacks can make beach tourists anxious about sharing the ocean with apex predators. Although the raw number of shark attacks is deficient, the absolute terror caused by sharks is genuine. We propose to use drones to intervene and prevent shark attacks for protecting swimmers and surfers.

Protection of wild animals relies on understanding the interaction between the animals and their environment. With the ability to rapidly access rugged areas, aerial monitoring by drones is fast becoming a viable tool for ecologists to monitor wild animals. Unfortunately, this approach results in significant disturbance to different species of wild animals. Inspired by motion camouflage, we explore a navigation method for a drone to covertly observe a group of animals and their habitat.

The herding of animals mainly refers to driving a group of animals from one position to another. The current practice is to use herding dogs. We investigate the robotic herding by a fleet of drones and analyze its effectiveness via model-based simulations.

Published papers related to this project: 

X. Li, H. Huang, A. Savkin, A Novel Method for Protecting Swimmers and Surfers from Shark Attacks using Communicating Autonomous Drones, IEEE Internet of Things Journal, 2020.

X. Li, H. Huang, A. Savkin, Autonomous Navigation of an Aerial Drone to Observe a Group of Wild Animals with Reduced Visual Disturbance, IEEE Systems Journal, 2021.

X. Li, H. Huang, A. Savkin, J. Zhang, Robotic Herding of Farm Animals Using a Network of Barking Aerial Drones, Drones. 2021

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