Title: Quaternion Neural Networks for Robust Environmental Perception in Adverse Weather Autonomous Driving

Abstract: Reliable environmental perception in autonomous driving remains challenging due to adverse weather conditions degrading image quality and compromising computer vision tasks. While traditional image processing methods struggle to mitigate these effects, this keynote introduces Quaternion Neural Networks (QNNs) as an innovative solution for robust scene understanding in difficult weather conditions. QNNs utilize four-dimensional quaternion numbers to efficiently process multidimensional visual data while capturing intrinsic relationships between color channels and spatial features. This mathematical framework provides several advantages over conventional real-valued neural networks, including reduced parameters, improved generalization, and natural handling of structural dependencies in visual data. This talk will cover the fundamental principles of QNNs, including quaternion convolution operations and recent advancements in quaternion transformers. We will demonstrate their practical application in autonomous driving scenarios, highlighting superior performance in weather effect removal, semantic segmentation, and object detection in foggy, cloudy, and rainy conditions. Experimental results show that QNN-based approaches consistently outperform traditional real-valued networks in preserving scene details and maintaining perception reliability under adverse weather, all while requiring fewer parameters. The presentation will conclude with insights into future research directions and potential applications beyond autonomous driving.

Biography: Dr. Sos Agaian is a Distinguished Professor of Computer Science at the Graduate Center and the College of Staten Island, CUNY. Before joining CUNY, he was the Peter T. Flawn Professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio. He also served as a Visiting Professor at Tufts University and a Lead Scientist at Aware, Inc. in Massachusetts. His research spans computational vision, machine learning, AI, multimedia security, remote sensing, and biomedical imaging. Dr. Agaian has received funding from NSF, DARPA, Google, and other agencies. He has published over 850 articles, 10 books, and 19 book chapters and holds 56 patents/disclosures, many of which have been licensed. He has mentored 45 PhD students and received multiple awards for research and teaching, including the MAEStro Educator of the Year, the Distinguished Research Award, the Innovator of the Year, the Tech Flash Titans-Top Researcher Award, and recognition as an Influential Member of the School of Engineering at Tufts University. He is an Associate Editor for several journals, including the Image Processing Transaction (IEEE) and IEEE Transaction of Cybernetics. He is a fellow of the Society for Imaging Science and Technology (IS&T), the Optical Society of America (SPIE), the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), The Asia-Pacific Artificial Intelligence Association (AAIA), and a Foreign Member of the Armenian National Academy. He has delivered over 30 keynote speeches, 100 invited talks, and co-founded/chaired over 200 international conferences. He has also been a Distinguished IEEE Systems, Man, and Cybernetics Society Lecturer.

Title: TBD

Abstract: TBD

Biography: Prof. Ruxu Du was born in China in 1955. He received his Master’s degree from the South China University of Technology in 1983 and his Ph.D. degree from the University of Michigan in 1989. He has taught in the University of Windsor, in Windsor, Ontario, Canada (1991⎯1999), the University of Miami, in Coral Gables, Florida. USA (1999⎯2001), the Chinese University of Hong Kong in Hong Kong SAR (2001⎯2018), and the South China University of Technology (2018⎯2021). Prof. Du is the founding director of the Guangzhou Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Advanced Technology (2011⎯2016), the founding dean of S. M. Wu School of Intelligent Engineering, South China University of Technology, as well as the founding director of the Institute of Precision Engineering in the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Porf. Du’s areas of research include AI applications in medicine, precision engineering, design and manufacturing (metal forming, machining, plastic injection molding and etc.), as well as robotics and automation. He has published over 500 papers in various academic journals and international conferences. He is the associate editor / the members of editorial board of six international journals. <Learn More>

Title: TBD

Abstract: TBD

Biography: Professor and Doctoral Supervisor, Harbin Institute of Technology (Shenzhen); Recipient of the Guangdong Special Support Program for Young Top Talents in Technological Innovation and the Shenzhen Outstanding Young Scientists Fund; Academic Leader of the Shenzhen Key Laboratory of Advanced Motion Control Technology and Modern Automation Equipment. In July and October 2009, he obtained his doctoral degrees from the University of Science and Technology of China and City University of Hong Kong respectively. From 2014 to 2015, he served as a visiting scholar at ETHZ-ASL (Autonomous Systems Lab, ETH Zurich), a world-renowned robotics laboratory.

Dr. Chen Haoyao has long been engaged in research on special robots and their intelligent algorithms. He has undertaken nearly 20 research projects funded by institutions including the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Department of Science and Technology of Guangdong Province, and the Shenzhen Science, Technology and Innovation Commission/Shenzhen Municipal Commission of Economy, Trade and Information Technology. He has developed a series of robotic systems, such as high-mobility obstacle-surmounting robots, bionic robotic fish, aerial manipulators, optical tweezers robots, amphibious robots, and the "Handizhe" (Earth-Shaker) rescue robot. In recent years, he has published over 100 SCI/EI-indexed papers in international mainstream journals and conferences in the field of robotics, including IEEE Transactions on Robotics (TRO), The International Journal of Robotics Research (IJRR), IEEE Transactions on Fuzzy Systems (TFR), Journal of Field Robotics (JFR), Autonomous Robots (AURO), IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics (TMECH), the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), and the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS). He has also received nominations for the Best Conference Paper Award at the International Conference on Robotics and Biomimetics (ROBIO) and the Best Paper Award at the International Conference on Unmanned Systems (ICUS). His innovative research on robotic visual servoing for grasping was selected as a cover paper by the prestigious SCI journal Journal of Bionic Engineering (JBE), and his achievements in autonomous exploration of robots in rough terrain were featured as a cover paper by the authoritative journal Journal of Field Robotics (JFR). <Personal Webpage>