Luke Ng: Personal Home Page

In 1996, I received my Hons. B.A.Sc. from the University of Waterloo from the Department of Mechanical Engineering. My CO-OP terms included work with Siemens Electric Ltd (London, Ontario)as an Automotive Process Engineer and the London Health Sciences Centre (London, Ontario), Victoria Hospital Campus as a Biomedical Engineer.

Upon graduation, I was employed at CAE Electronics Ltd. (Montreal, Quebec) a leader in the Flight Simulation industry. I worked as a hardware/software engineer on the flight control systems of the Boeing 777, 767, 757, 747, 737 as well as the Canadair Regional Jet. After 2 years of outstanding service I returned to the University of Waterloo in 1998 to pursue a Masters Degree in Robotics.

In spring 2000, I started a technology firm called Sinologic Technologies Inc. Its goal was to provide the custom hardware & middleware technologies to research and development labs such as Ford Motor Company's Scientific Research Laboratory (Dearborn, Michigan). The focus was in Linux-based data acqusition and control solutions. We have since refocused to provide middleware and consulting services for autonomous vehicle research. Please visit our corporate website for more details.

My current research investigates the implementation of Reinforcement Learning to the problem of autonomous vehicle control. Our goal is to determine methodologies which can be used so that agents can Machine Learn their own non-linear motion controllers which will be used as the basic skills required for coordinated driving of any automobile.

We began this research in early 2006 by running a pilot study using Webots 5, where we performed Reinforcement Learning on mobile robot for collaborative driving. To come up with a plausible solution for automotive control, extensive automotive modeling is required. Recently we have built a detailed vehicle dynamics model for a generic automobile. This model is then used in the reinforcment learning process and controller evalution.

In 2001, I received my M.A.Sc. from the Department of Mechanical Engineering of the University of Waterloo under the supervison of Prof. Jan P. Huissoon. My thesis involved the design and construction of a distributed network of industrial robots for autonomous vision-based welding called (DROID).

In 2002, I began my doctoral studies at the University of Toronto's Institute of Aerospace (UTIAS) under the supervision of Prof. G.M.T. D'Eleuterio with the Space Robotics Group in the area of mobile robotics for space exploration. Due to supervision problems, I transferred my studies to the University of Waterloo in December 2005.

In 2008, I recieved my Ph.D. from the Department of Mechanical and Mechatronics Enginnering at University of Waterloo under the supervision of Prof. Jan P. Huissoon. My thesis is titled "Reinforcement Learning of Dynamic Collaborative Driving" and will be completed in April 2008. The research uses a relatively new machine learning technique called Reinforcement Learning to derive non-linear control systems for the autonomous vehicle control for Dynamic Collaborative Driving (an automated driving approach). This research brings together the topics of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Vehicle Dynamics Modeling and Non-Linear Control. This project is funded by the Auto 21 Network Centres of Excellence program.

Currently, I am teaching GENE 121: Introduction to Digital Computation at the University of Waterloo. I will be pursuing post doctoral work at Defense Research and Development Canada (DRDC-Ottawa) in the area of Unmanned Air Vehicles, this research will allow me to investigate machine learning approaches to controlling autonomous flight.

Refereed Journal Publications:

Ng, L., Clark, C.M., Huissoon, J.P. "Reinforcement Learning of Dynamic Collaborative Driving. II: Lateral Adaptive Control ." In International Journal of Vehicle Information and Communication Systems. Inderscience Ltd. 2008. (In Press)

Ng, L., Clark, C.M., Huissoon, J.P. "Reinforcement Learning of Dynamic Collaborative Driving. I: Longitudinal Adaptive Control ." In International Journal of Vehicle Information and Communication Systems. Inderscience Ltd. 2008. (In Press)

Refereed Conference Papers:

Ng, L., Clark, C.M., Huissoon, J.P. "Reinforcement Learning of Adaptive Longitudinal Vehicle Control for Dynamic Collaborative Driving." 2008 IEEE Inteligent Vehicles Symposium (IV'08), Eindhoven, The Netherlands, 2008. (In Press)

Dao, T.S., Ng, L., Clark, C.M., Huissoon, J.P. "Realtime Experiments in Markov-Based Lane Position Estimation Using Wireless Ad-Hoc Network." 2008 IEEE Inteligent Vehicles Symposium (IV'08), Eindhoven, The Netherlands, 2008. (In Press)

Ng, L., Clark, C.M., Huissoon, J.P., D'Eleuterio G.M.T., "A Decentralized Reinforcement Learning Controller for Collaborative Driving." In Proceedings of 1st IFAC Workshop on Multi-Vehicle Systems 2006 MVS ’06. Oct 2-3, Salvador, Bahia, Brazil, 2006. [pdf]

Refereed Abstract Conference Presentations:

Ng, L., Chris, C., Huissoon, J.P., "Combine Lateral and Longitudinal Vehicle Control Using Reinforcement Learning for Dynamic Collaborative Driving", 2007 ITS Canada Annual Conference, Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada, 2000. [pdf]

Ng, L., Huissoon, J.P., "A Distributed Multi-Robotic Environment for Flexible Manufacturing", In Proceedings of the 31st International Symposium on Robotics (ISR 2000), p 194-5, 2000. [pdf]

Theses:

Ng, L. "Reinforcement Learning for Dynamic Collaborative Driving." Ph.D. Thesis, Department of Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering, University of Waterloo, 2008. (In Review)

Ng, L. "A Distributed Robot of Intelligent Devices (DROID): Conception, Design, and Implementation for Autonomous Multiple Robotic Welding." M.A.Sc. Thesis, Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Waterloo, 2001. [pdf]

Poster Presentations:

Huissoon J.P., Michaud F., Clark C.M., Dao T.S., Leung K., Ng, L. "Dynamic Collaborative Driving F206-FCD." Auto 21 Annual HQP 2007 Conference, Windsor, Ontario, Canada 2007. [pdf]

Huissoon J.P., Clark C.M., Dao T.S., Leung K., Ng, L. "Dynamic Collaborative Driving F206-FCD." Auto 21 Annual HQP 2006 Conference, Barrie, Ontario, Canada 2006. [pdf]

From May 1998 to April 2001, I pursued my Masters Degree at the University of Waterloo, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering under the supervision of Prof. Jan P. Huissoon in the Controls and Automation Group. My thesis investigated the problem of using ethernet as a means of linking up several robots in order to perform as a coordinated robotic work-cell. This research allowed me to learn and program various aspects of robotics such as low-level robot control (Reis Robot), motion control (Delta Tau), computer vision (MVS, Dalsa/Coreco), computer networks, and real-time programming (QNX).

From January 2002 to December 2005, I pursued my Doctoral studies at the University of Toronto's Institute for Aerospace Studies (UTIAS) under the supervision of Prof. GM.T. D'Eleuterio. During my time at UTIAS, I researched various aspects of mobile robotics such as computer vision, navigation, radio-localization, artificial intelligence and multi-robot control.

As a member of the Space Robotics research group, I participated in the design and construction of 10 rovers which were used for mobile robotics experiments. I was the software lead for this aspect of our group's research. My responsibilities included hardware integration, custom software development, device drivers, network infrastructure and communication, computer vision and operating system support (LINUX). A few of our rovers were used by other institutions and corporations for research and development purposes, these include: MDA Space Systems, Neptec Design Group, and York University.