The Summary of 2024

Published: Dec 31, 2024 by

Chen Wang

As a new tradition, we create this lab summary for the year of 2024. The Theme of SAIR Lab in 2024 is 👉 Hope 👈.

1. SAIR STAR Awards Announced

In early 2024, we created the SAIR STAR Award and SAIR Rising STAR Award.

After voting among all lab members, we are excited to announce the final winners.

SAIR Rising STAR

SAIR Rising STAR is the highest honor for junior researchers in SAIR Lab. Winner received a Certificate and $3000.

Winner: Taimeng Fu, for achievements in SLAM and offroad driving.
Invited Award Presenter: Prof. Kaiyi Ji.

SAIR STAR

SAIR STAR is the highest honor in SAIR Lab. Winner received Trophy, Medal, Certificate, and $7000.

Winner: Zitong Zhan
Invited Award Presenter: Prof. Kaiyi Ji.

Congratulations to the Winners!

2. Multiple Awards and Grants Received

In 2024, SAIR Lab received two significant research grants: a $1.2 million DARPA TIAMAT Grant and a $100K Sony Faculty Innovation Award. The DARPA TIAMAT Grant will support research in learning and transferring spatial common sense via neural-symbolic learning. The Sony Award will advance high-level spatial navigation abilities on mobile robots.

These funding opportunities will significantly accelerate the lab’s vision of Spatial AI & Robotics. Furthermore, the lab director, Dr. Wang, was elected as an IEEE Senior Member and received the CSE Research Award from the department.

SAIR lab will also be participating in the DARPA TIAMAT challenge, which is organized into two 18-month phases. The Phase 1 will develop sim-to-sim autonomy transfer techniques, while Phase 2 will tackle sim-to-real autonomy transfer methods.

The Schedule of DARPA TIAMAT Challenge — The Motivation of DARPA TIAMAT Project

3. Highlighted Research: iSeries Articles Created

This year, the majority of research efforts were dedicated to Imperative Learning (IL), an emerging self-supervised neural-symbolic learning framework for robot autonomy. SAIR Lab members have successfully applied IL to diverse domains, such as SLAM, multi-robot routing, global planning, feature matching, humanoid robots walking, and kinematics-aware planning. Imperative learning is first formally formulated in the following paper.

Imperative Learning: A Self-supervised Neural-Symbolic Learning Framework for Robot Autonomy.
Chen Wang, Kaiyi Ji, Junyi Geng, Zhongqiang Ren, Taimeng Fu, Fan Yang, Yifan Guo, Haonan He, Xiangyu Chen, Zitong Zhan, Qiwei Du, Shaoshu Su, Bowen Li, Yuheng Qiu, Yi Du, Qihang Li, Yifan Yang, Xiao Lin, Zhipeng Zhao.
arXiv preprint arXiv:2406.16087, 2024.

SAIR Lab Recommended
```
@article{wang2024imperative,
  title = {Imperative Learning: A Self-supervised Neural-Symbolic Learning Framework for Robot Autonomy},
  author = {Wang, Chen and Ji, Kaiyi and Geng, Junyi and Ren, Zhongqiang and Fu, Taimeng and Yang, Fan and Guo, Yifan and He, Haonan and Chen, Xiangyu and Zhan, Zitong and Du, Qiwei and Su, Shaoshu and Li, Bowen and Qiu, Yuheng and Du, Yi and Li, Qihang and Yang, Yifan and Lin, Xiao and Zhao, Zhipeng},
  journal = {arXiv preprint arXiv:2406.16087},
  year = {2024},
  url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.16087},
  code = {https://github.com/sair-lab/iSeries},
  website = {https://sairlab.org/iseries},
  addendum = {SAIR Lab Recommended}
}
```
```
Wang, Chen and Ji, Kaiyi and Geng, Junyi and Ren, Zhongqiang and Fu, Taimeng and Yang, Fan and Guo, Yifan and He, Haonan and Chen, Xiangyu and Zhan, Zitong and Du, Qiwei and Su, Shaoshu and Li, Bowen and Qiu, Yuheng and Du, Yi and Li, Qihang and Yang, Yifan and Lin, Xiao and Zhao, Zhipeng, "Imperative Learning: A Self-supervised Neural-Symbolic Learning Framework for Robot Autonomy," arXiv preprint arXiv:2406.16087, 2024.
```

The articles using imperative learning is named as iSeries articles:

iKap: Kinematics-aware Planning with Imperative Learning.
Qihang Li, Zhuoqun Chen, Haoze Zheng, Haonan He, Shaoshu Su, Junyi Geng, Chen Wang.
arXiv preprint arXiv:2412.09496, 2024.
```
@article{li2024ikap,
  title = {{iKap}: Kinematics-aware Planning with Imperative Learning},
  author = {Li, Qihang and Chen, Zhuoqun and Zheng, Haoze and He, Haonan and Su, Shaoshu and Geng, Junyi and Wang, Chen},
  journal = {arXiv preprint arXiv:2412.09496},
  year = {2024},
  url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.09496},
  video = {https://youtu.be/7HPAMFbHc4U},
  website = {https://sairlab.org/iKap}
}
```
```
Li, Qihang and Chen, Zhuoqun and Zheng, Haoze and He, Haonan and Su, Shaoshu and Geng, Junyi and Wang, Chen, "iKap: Kinematics-aware Planning with Imperative Learning," arXiv preprint arXiv:2412.09496, 2024.
```
iWalker: Imperative Visual Planning for Walking Humanoid Robot.
Xiao Lin, Yuhao Huang, Taimeng Fu, Xiaobin Xiong, Chen Wang.
arXiv preprint arXiv:2409.18361, 2024.

SAIR Lab Recommended
```
@article{lin2024iwalker,
  title = {{iWalker}: Imperative Visual Planning for Walking Humanoid Robot},
  author = {Lin, Xiao and Huang, Yuhao and Fu, Taimeng and Xiong, Xiaobin and Wang, Chen},
  journal = {arXiv preprint arXiv:2409.18361},
  year = {2024},
  url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.18361},
  video = {https://youtu.be/FPV74PznzTU},
  website = {https://sairlab.org/iwalker},
  addendum = {SAIR Lab Recommended}
}
```
```
Lin, Xiao and Huang, Yuhao and Fu, Taimeng and Xiong, Xiaobin and Wang, Chen, "iWalker: Imperative Visual Planning for Walking Humanoid Robot," arXiv preprint arXiv:2409.18361, 2024.
```
iMatching: Imperative Correspondence Learning.
Zitong Zhan, Dasong Gao, Yun-Jou Lin, Youjie Xia, Chen Wang.
European Conference on Computer Vision (ECCV), 2024.

SAIR Lab Recommended
```
@inproceedings{zhan2024imatching,
  title = {{iMatching}: Imperative Correspondence Learning},
  author = {Zhan, Zitong and Gao, Dasong and Lin, Yun-Jou and Xia, Youjie and Wang, Chen},
  booktitle = {European Conference on Computer Vision (ECCV)},
  year = {2024},
  url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2312.02141},
  code = {https://github.com/sair-lab/iMatching},
  website = {https://sairlab.org/iMatching},
  addendum = {SAIR Lab Recommended}
}
```
```
Zhan, Zitong and Gao, Dasong and Lin, Yun-Jou and Xia, Youjie and Wang, Chen, "iMatching: Imperative Correspondence Learning," European Conference on Computer Vision (ECCV), 2024.
```
iMTSP: Solving Min-Max Multiple Traveling Salesman Problem with Imperative Learning.
Yifan Guo, Zhongqiang Ren, Chen Wang.
IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2024.

SAIR Lab Recommended
```
@inproceedings{guo2024imtsp,
  title = {{iMTSP}: Solving Min-Max Multiple Traveling Salesman Problem with Imperative Learning},
  author = {Guo, Yifan and Ren, Zhongqiang and Wang, Chen},
  booktitle = {IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS)},
  year = {2024},
  url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.00285},
  code = {https://github.com/sair-lab/iMTSP},
  video = {https://youtu.be/h0oflFcvPSc},
  website = {https://sairlab.org/iMTSP},
  addendum = {SAIR Lab Recommended}
}
```
```
Guo, Yifan and Ren, Zhongqiang and Wang, Chen, "iMTSP: Solving Min-Max Multiple Traveling Salesman Problem with Imperative Learning," IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2024.
```
iSLAM: Imperative SLAM.
Taimeng Fu, Shaoshu Su, Yiren Lu, Chen Wang.
IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L), 2024.

SAIR Lab Recommended
```
@article{fu2024islam,
  title = {{iSLAM}: Imperative {SLAM}},
  author = {Fu, Taimeng and Su, Shaoshu and Lu, Yiren and Wang, Chen},
  journal = {IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L)},
  year = {2024},
  url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.07894},
  code = {https://github.com/sair-lab/iSLAM/},
  video = {https://youtu.be/rtCvx0XCRno},
  website = {https://sairlab.org/iSLAM},
  addendum = {SAIR Lab Recommended}
}
```
```
Fu, Taimeng and Su, Shaoshu and Lu, Yiren and Wang, Chen, "iSLAM: Imperative SLAM," IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L), 2024.
```
iA*: Imperative Learning-based A* Search for Pathfinding.
Xiangyu Chen, Fan Yang, Chen Wang.
arXiv preprint arXiv:2403.15870, 2024.

SAIR Lab Recommended
```
@article{chen2024iastar,
  title = {{iA*}: Imperative Learning-based A* Search for Pathfinding},
  author = {Chen, Xiangyu and Yang, Fan and Wang, Chen},
  journal = {arXiv preprint arXiv:2403.15870},
  year = {2024},
  url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.15870},
  addendum = {SAIR Lab Recommended}
}
```
```
Chen, Xiangyu and Yang, Fan and Wang, Chen, "iA*: Imperative Learning-based A* Search for Pathfinding," arXiv preprint arXiv:2403.15870, 2024.
```

4. SAIR Lab People

In 2024, we are thrilled to welcome a new PhD student and bid farewell to several interns. Additionally, we had the privilege of witnessing a total solar eclipse in Buffalo on April 8, 2024. The next total solar eclipse visible in the Buffalo region will occur on October 26, 2144.

5. Theme of 2025

The Theme of SAIR Lab in 2025 will be 👉 Transform 👈.