Dr. Fawzi Nashashibi: Decision Making for Autonomous Vehicles
Abstract: Recent advances in perception, decision-making, planning and control for autonomous vehicles have led to great improvements in functional and operational capabilities, with several prototypes already driving in the streets of different cities on the planet. Yet challenges remain regarding guaranteed safety and performance under various if not all driving circumstances. Indeed, planning methods that provide safe and system-compliant performance in complex, cluttered environments while modeling the uncertain interaction with other road users are required. Furthermore, new paradigms, such as interactive planning and end-to-end learning, raise questions to be addressed such in terms of safety and reliability.
In this presentation, recent approaches for integrated perception and planning and for behavior-aware planning are first presented, many of which rely on machine learning such as reinforcement learning with the comparison to classical decision-making methods. This raises the question of verification and safety, which we will tackle briefly. Finally, It's important to note that, for the time being, we'll only be dealing with situations on open roads, with no interaction with pedestrians. This last point represents one of the challenges facing future decision systems.
BIO: Dr. Fawzi Nashashibi, is a senior researcher and the Director of IMARA/RITS/ASTRA project team at INRIA de Paris since 2010.
He has been senior researcher and Program Manager in the robotics centre of the École des Mines de Paris (Mines ParisTech) since 1994 and was an R&D engineer and a project manager at ARMINES since May 2000. He was previously a research engineer at PROMIP (working on mobile robotics perception dedicated to space exploration) and a technical manager at Light Co. where he led the developments of Virtal Reality/Augmented Reality applications.
Fawzi Nashashibi has a Master’s Degree in Automation, Industrial Engineering and Signal Processing (LAAS/CNRS), a PhD in Robotics from Toulouse University prepared in (LAAS/CNRS) laboratory, and a HDR Diploma (Accreditation to research supervision) from University of Pierre et Marie Curie (Paris 6).
His main research topics are in environment perception and multi-sensor fusion, vehicle positioning and environment 3D modeling with main applications in Intelligent Transport Systems and Robotics.
He played key roles in more than 50 European and national French projects such as Carsense, ARCOS, ABV, LOVe, HAVE-it, SPEEDCAM, PICAV, CityMobil… some of which he is coordinating. He is also involved in many collaborations with French and international academics and industrial partners. He is author of numerous publications and patents in the field of ITS and ADAS systems.
His current interest focuses on advanced urban mobility through the design and development of highly Automated Transportation Systems. This includes Highly Automated Unmanned Guided Vehicles (such as Cybercars) as well automated personal vehicles. In this field he is known as an international expert.
Dr. Cătălin Golban: Recent Research Shaping the Self-Driving Car Industry
Abstract: Rapid advancements in artificial intelligence are fueling parallel progress in the self-driving car industry. Maintaining a close connection between academic research and industry is crucial for success in this rapidly evolving and highly challenging field. This keynote will provide an overview of promising recent research activities, including 3D data-driven perception, vision-language models, end-to-end learning, and foundation models. It will highlight how these advancements can make impact by addressing some of the remaining challenges in autonomous driving, supporting the ambition to push further the performance and the capabilities of self-driving cars systems in series vehicles.
BIO: Dr. Catalin Golban graduated with a degree in Computer Science and earned his PhD in Computer Vision from the Technical University of Cluj-Napoca in 2022.
With several years of experience in software engineering and research in the field of Computer Vision, he joined Bosch in 2013. Currently, he leads the video systems development team for driver assistance and automated driving at the Engineering Center Cluj. His primary motivation is to drive the development of cutting-edge technologies that have a meaningful impact on people’s lives. He is passionate about transforming state-of-the-art research into innovative automotive solutions—an essential focus of Bosch’s current and future activities in this dynamic and challenging field.