Jiaye Chen, He Huang, Yifan Huang, Robbin Xu

Student: Jiaye Chen, He Huang, Yifan Huang, Robbin Xu

Project: Applications of USVs in Littoral Environments | View Poster (PDF)

Institution: Lehigh University

Major: Computer Science

Advisor: Mooi Choo Chuah, John Spletzer

Abstract

There are two independent sub-projects under this title, which are “Real-Time Mapping of the Sea Surface” for coral reef data collection, and “Automatic Coral Reef Recognition” for coral reef data analysis.

At the most general level, our motivation for the first sub-project, sea surface mapping, is to develop a navigation system for small USVs, unmanned surface vehicles, with applications to data collection, surveillance and monitoring tasks. In order to navigate in its environment, the USV requires representation, i.e a map of the environment, which, in our case, would be the sea surf zone, the region where waves break. Due to its small size, the USV could easily get flipped over by these waves if not positioned properly. Thus, an application of the ability to detect, identify and forecast incoming waves from optic sensor input is needed.

The general motivation of the second sub-project is to apply machine-learning-oriented solutions on coral reef recognition tasks, which eventually can be used for biodiversity research and environmental monitoring. Two neural networks, VGG-16 and ResNet50, were properly studied, implemented, trained and evaluated with three datasets, which were MLC2008, EILAT and RSMAS. The performances of the neural networks were first studied with single dataset, and the best single-dataset solution was successfully applied on and improved for the union of these datasets, where image shapes, class sizes, and class categories differed significantly.

About Jiaye Chen

Jiaye Chen is an undergraduate president’s scholar pursuing B.S. in Computer Science & Engineering and Mechanical Engineering with a minor in Japanese. He performs senior project research with Professor Mooi Choo Chuah regarding the classification of coral reefs using neural networks. Jiaye has been using machine learning based image segmentation to analyze image data including MRI scans and CT scans. Besides the researches in Computer Science realm, he also focuses in mechanical behaviors of rigid bodies including railroad rails and human femurs. He is a member of the engineering honor society Tau Beta Pi.

About He Huang

He Huang, is a senior Computer Science and Engineering Major at Lehigh University and is about to pursue a Master in CS after graduation. He has a special interest in the Perception and the Computer Vision in Artificial Intelligence after participated in the USV researches supervised by Professor John Spletzer since 2018 Summer. In the future, He wishes to put more efforts in the industry of A.I. with his passion and creativity. Besides, he loves snowboarding, surfing and dogs.

About Yifan Huang

Yifan Huang is a senior Computer Science student with minors in Data Science and Economics. He is on the Dean’s List starting from his first semester and has been invited to be a member of Tau Beta Pi, the oldest engineering society in the US. His current research interests are Machine Learning, Computer Vision, and Software Engineering. Supervised by Prof. Mooi Choo Chuah and Prof. John Spletzer, his Capstone project group won the departmental Outstanding Senior Project Award for his second Capstone project, Applications of USVs in Littoral Environments. During 2018, as a member of the ALPS lab at Lehigh, he worked closely with Prof. Ting Wang and conducted research on adversarial attacks on artificial neural networks.

About Robbin Xu

Yichen (Robbin) Xu, is a senior at Lehigh University, majoring in Computer Science and Mechanical Engineering. He has been working with Prof. John Spletzer since May 2018, with topics related to mobile robotic navigation. Outside of academics, Yichen is involved with the running club and Esports team at Lehigh. He is a member of the engineering honor society Tau Beta Pi and is planning to attend graduate school to pursue a master’s degree in the field of robotics.

You are here

Jiaye Chen, He Huang, Yifan Huang, Robbin Xu