Advanced Marine Autonomy under Stochasticity and Uncertainty

Abstract

This talk presents recent advances in autonomous navigation for unmanned surface vessels (USVs) operating under stochasticity and uncertainty. Focusing on the full autonomy stack, i.e., sensing, planning, and control, it highlights methods that explicitly account for environmental variability and model uncertainty in maritime settings. On the perception side, the talk introduces Bayesian deep learning-enabled object detection, which provides both semantic understanding and uncertainty quantification for robust decision-making in challenging conditions. In addition, a novel radar odometry framework is presented, enabling reliable state estimation in degraded visual environments such as fog, rain, and low-light scenarios.

For decision-making, a new planning paradigm based on Virtual Maps is proposed for autonomous exploration. This approach achieves a principled balance between exploration and exploitation, allowing USVs to efficiently gather information while maintaining safe and goal-directed navigation. The integration of these components leads to a unified autonomy framework capable of operating reliably in uncertain and dynamic marine environments. The talk concludes with experimental validations and real-world deployments, demonstrating improved robustness, adaptability, and performance in complex maritime missions.

Speaker

Prof. Yuanchang Liu is an Associate Professor and the Chair of Marine Research in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at University College London. He was also the Programme Director of MSc Power Systems Engineering from 2023 to 2025. Prior to joining the Department, he served as a Research Fellow in Robotic Vision and Autonomous Vehicles at the Surrey Space Centre, University of Surrey. Prof. Liu earned his MSc degree in Power Systems Engineering and PhD degree in Marine Control Engineering, both from University College London in 2011 and 2016, respectively.

Prof. Liu's research primarily focuses on automation and autonomy in marine, with a special emphasis on exploring technologies related to sensing, perception, and the guidance and control of intelligent and autonomous vehicles. In recognition of his contributions, Prof. Liu has been consistently featured among the World's Top 2% Scientists by Stanford University since 2022, in the field of Ocean Engineering and Artificial Intelligence (AI). In 2023, he received the prestigious Denny Medal, awarded by the Institute of Marine Engineering, Science, and Technology (IMarEST) for his innovation in marine autonomy and automation. He was awarded the Kan Tong Po International Fellowship 2025 from The Royal Society. He serves on the editorial boards of several leading international journals, including Research, Journal of Marine Engineering and Technology, and Applied Ocean Research.