Robots create a better world!
Biography
Kevin is a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) of Computer Science at University of Sheffield. He was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Oxford Robotics Institute, University of Oxford. Kevin was awarded the prestigious National Scholarship from the Scottish government and received a Ph.D. in robotics from the University of Glasgow in 2016. He worked as a postdoctoral research fellow at Lincoln Centre of Autonomous Systems, University of Lincoln (2017-2018) and Extreme Robotics Lab, University of Birmingham (2016-2017). Since 2012, he has worked as the Principal Investigator or the main researcher of several EU/EPSRC funded projects e.g. AdMaLL (£186k), CloPeMa (€3.7 m), RoMaNs (€6.4 m), ILIAD (€6.9 m), and MobileRobotics (£4.9 m). He is a member of IEEE, BMVA, EUcog, SICSA, etc. He frequently serves as a reviewer in top tier robotics and AI conferences (e.g. RSS, ICRA, IROS, NIPS, AAAI) and journals (e.g. IJRR, TRO, RA-L). And he serves as Associate Editor in IROS 2020.
Kevin's research focuses on the core challenges in the emerging robot vision to enable the robot to manipulate complex industrial objects e.g. deformable object and waste-like objects or drive in the dynamic, real-life environment e.g. warehouse, on-road/off-road driving. His research pursues the fantastic intersection between statistical machine learning and solid robotic system integration.
News:
[Active] New visual-based navigation demo is released [GitHub].
New grant from The Royal Society.
[Active] Our AdMaLL project website is launched [link].
1-2 full-time/part-time internship positions are available for AdMall project, please contact me if you are interested.
Our paper "EU Long-term Dataset for Autonomous Driving" is accepted by IROS2020 [GitHub].
A Post-Doctoral RA position is available (open to excellent MEng or MSc students as well) [link].
We launched CV research lecture and reading group [link].
New demo of visual-based navigation is published [Link].
New demo of large-scale robot localisation is published [Link].
Nuclear waste datasets are published [material recognition] [object recognition].
Contact: Li.Sun AT sheffield.ac.uk
Research
Dual-Arm Manipulation
Sorting & Segregation
Interactive Manipulation
Hand-eye Calibration
Object detection
Semantic Mapping
Online Learning
Multi-sensor Robotcar
Fast Localisation
Long-term Mapping
Deep VO
Lidar Odometry
Robot Navigation
Last-mile delivery
Day-to-night Navigation
Mobile Grasping
Human-aware Forklift Navigation
Projects
MaSaGe: Towards long-term Mapping and Semantic Guided Robot navigation in changing Environments. Principal Investigator. The Royal Society, 20K, 2020-2021.
AdMaLL: Advanced 3d Mapping and Long-term Localisation with semantics understanding and terrain assessment for robot navigation in gps-denied environments. Principal Investigator. EPSRC-UKRI, 186K, 2020-2021
Mobile Robotics: Enabling a Pervasive Technology of the Future. Postdoctoral Researcher. EP/M019918/1, £4.9 million, 2015-2020.
ILIAD: Intra-Logistics with Integrated Automatic Deployment: safe and scalable fleets in shared spaces. Postdoctoral Researcher. EU H2020 732737, €6.9 million, 2018-2020.
RoMaNS: Robotic Manipulation for Nuclear Sort and Segregation. Postdoctoral Researcher. EU H2020 645582 €6.4 million, 2016-2019.
CloPeMa: Clothes Perception and Manipulation. PhD Researcher. EU FP7 288553, €3.7 million, 2015-2017
Toyota Partner Robot joint research project. Co-Investigator, Toyota Motor Corporation, approximately $50,000, 2018-2021
Research on Motion Planning and Strategy Optimisation for Real-time Grasping with Consideration of Environmental Interaction and Learning from Demonstration in Complex Environment, Project Co-Investigator, National Science Foundation for Distinguished Young Scholars of China (approximately £30,000), 2018-2021
Lifelong learning for accurate autonomous vehicle perception and localisation, Co-Investigator, UTBM-BQR (Research Quality Bonus), €4,600, 2017-18
NVIDIA donated GPU grant Titan X, PI (approximately £1000)
BMVA student travel grant, PI (£750)
Team
Marwan KM Taher, Research Assistant
Ahmed Abbas, Research Assistant
Christopher Wild, Research Assistant
Fuhai Ling, PhD student
Jiahui Liu, PhD student
Irum Mehboob, PhD student, co-supervisor, with Prof. Rustam Stolkin
Baoyan Guo, MSC student
Justin Guino, MSC student
Zheng Sui, MSC student
Shuming Zhang, MSC student
Chengyu Jiang, MSC student
Ze Huang, MSC student, co-supervisor, with Dr Songzhi Su
Haijie Shen, MSC student, co-supervisor, with Dr Songzhi Su
Publications
My Google Scholar [Link]
Selected Papers
Li Sun, Marwan Taher, et. al. "Robust and Long-Term Monocular Teach-and-Repeat Navigation using a Single-Experience Topological Map". [DEMO] [DEMO2]
Li Sun, D Adolfsson, M Magnusson, H Andreasson, I Posner, and T Duckett. "Localising Faster: Efficient and precise lidar-based robot localisation in large-scale environments". ICRA 2020 [PDF] [DEMO] [PRESENTATION]
C Zhao, Li Sun, Z Yan, G Neumann, T Duckett, R Stolkin. "Learning Kalman Network: A deep monocular visual odometry for on-road driving", Robotics and Autonomous Systems. [PDF] [DEMO]
Li Sun, C Zhao, Z Yan, L Pengcheng, R Stolkin, T Duckett. "A novel weakly-supervised approach for RGB-D-based nuclear waste object detection and categorization", IEEE Sensors Journal. [PDF] [DATASET] [CODE]
Li Sun, Zhi Yan, Anestis Zaganidis, Cheng Zhao, Tom Duckett. “Recurrent-OctoMap: Learning Feature Fusion for Long-term 3D-Lidar-based Semantic Mapping”, IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters RA-L. [PDF] [DEMO]
Anestis Zaganidis, Li Sun, Tom Duckett, Grzegorz Cielniak. “Integrating semantic knowledge into 3D Normal Distributions Transform registration”. IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters RA-L. [PDF]
Cheng Zhao, Li Sun, Pulak Purkait, Tom Duckett, Rustam Stolkin. “Learning Monocular Visual Odometry with Dense 3D Mapping using an End-to-end Network”, International Conference of Robotics and Automation (IROS) 2018. [PDF] [DEMO]
Zhi Yan, Li Sun , Tom Duckett, and Nicola Bellotto. Multisensor Online Transfer Learning for 3D LiDAR-based Human Classification with a Mobile Robot. accepted by International Conference of Robotics and Automation (IROS) 2018. [ArXiv] [DATASET]
Li Sun, Zhi Yan, Sergi Molina Mellado, Marc Hanheide, Tom Duckett. 3DOF Pedestrian Trajectory Prediction Learned from Long-Term Autonomous Mobile Robot Deployment Data. ICRA 2018. [PDF] [DATASET]
Cheng Zhao, Li Sun, Rustam Stolkin. A Fully End-To-End Deep Learning Approach For Real-Time Simultaneous 3D Reconstruction And Material Recognition, ICAR 2017 [PDF] [DEMO]
Li Sun, Gerarado Aragon-Camarasa, Simon Rogers, J. Paul Siebert. "Single-Shot Clothing Category Recognition in Free-Configurations with Application to Autonomous Clothes Sorting", IROS 2017. [PDF] [DATASET] [CODE] [DEMO]
Li Sun, Simon Rogers, Gerarado Aragon-Camarasa, J. Paul Siebert. "Recognising the Clothing Categories from Free-Configuration using Gaussian-Process-Based Interactive Perception", ICRA 2016. [PDF] [DEMO]
Li Sun, Gerardo Aragon-Camarasa, Paul Siebert, Simon Rogers. “Accurate Garment Manipulation using Binocular Stereo Head with the Application to Dual-Arm Flattening”, ICRA 2015. *Best Conference Paper*, *Best Student Paper*, *Best Manipulation Paper* Nominations. [DEMO] [PDF]
Li Sun, Yanping Lv et al. “ECG Analysis Using Multiple Instance Learning for Myocardial Infarction Detection”, IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering, 2012. [PDF] [CODE]