I am a Phd candidate, with the Institute of Robotics and Automatic Information System, College of Artificial Intelligence, and with the Tianjin Key Laboratory of Intelligent Robotics, Nankai University, Tianjin 300350, China.

My research directions are SLAM and Reinforcement Learning.

🔥 News

• 6 Nov 2023, Our new work SemanticTopoLoop has been put on arxiv!
• 13 Jul 2022, Our paper Object-Aware-SLAM has been accepted by RA-L and IROS 2022.

📝 Publications

👄 Main Paper

RAL and IROS 2022

Object-Aware SLAM Based on Efficient Quadric Initialization and Joint Data Association, Zhenzhong Cao, Yunzhou Zhang, Rui Tian, Rong Ma, Xinggang Hu, Sonya Coleman, Dermot Kerr | Project

• We propose an efficient quadric initialization (EQI) method based on object detection and surfel construction which initializes quadrics using fewer frames with small viewing angles.
• We propose a robust object-level joint data association (JDA) method combining multi-dimensional information and statistic distributions.
• We propose a multi-constraint optimization factor graph for quadrics optimization and joint bundle adjustment.
• We implement a complete visual semantic SLAM system, aiming to build a novel object-oriented and semanticallyenhanced map for indoor robot interaction.

Arxiv 2023

SemanticTopoLoop: Semantic Loop Closure With 3D Topological Graph Based on Quadric-Level Object Map, Zhenzhong Cao | Project

• MLV-ODA method is introduced to reduce the time and space complexity of data association, indirectly promoting the accuracy and completeness of object construction in the scene.
• QLT-SLC method is presented to improve the precision and recall rate of loop closure, as well as enhance the system’s localization accuracy.
• The proposed MLV-ODA method and QLT-SLC method are embed into the Object-Aware SLAM system, which jointly maintain the PPO-MD.
• Qualitative experiments, quantitative experiments, and ablation studies are designed to demonstrate the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed MLV-ODA and QLT-SLC method.

📚 Co-Author Paper

• RAL and ICRA 2021 Accurate and Robust Object SLAM With 3D Quadric Landmark Reconstruction in Outdoors, Rui Tian, Yunzhou Zhang, Yonghui Feng, Linghao Yang, Zhenzhong Cao, Sonya Coleman, Dermot Kerr
• ICRA 2022 SemLoc: Accurate and Robust Visual Localization with Semantic and Structural Constraints from Prior Maps, Shiwen Liang, Yunzhou Zhang, Rui Tian, Delong Zhu, Linghao Yang, Zhenzhong Cao
• IROS 2022 CFP-SLAM: A Real-time Visual SLAM Based on Coarse-to-Fine Probability in Dynamic Environments, Xinggang Hu, Yunzhou Zhang, Zhenzhong Cao, Rong Ma, Yanmin Wu, Zhiqiang Deng, Wenkai Sun
• TITS 2023 Object SLAM With Robust Quadric Initialization and Mapping for Dynamic Outdoors, Rui Tian, Yunzhou Zhang, Zhenzhong Cao, Jinpeng Zhang, Linghao Yang, Sonya Coleman, Dermot Kerr, Kun Li

🎖 Honors and Awards

• 2017. 10, Provincial first prize in the National College Student Mathematics Competition
• 2020.09, Principle’s scholarship
• 2021.10, First Class Academic Scholarship

📖 Educations

• 2023.09 - today, Phd candidate, College of Artificial Intelligence, Nankai University, Tianjin.
• 2020.09 - 2023.06, Master, College of Control Science and Engineering, NorthEast Univeristy, Shenyang.
• 2016.09 - 2020.06, Undergraduate, College of Control Science and Engineering, NorthEast Univeristy, Shenyang.
• 2013.09 - 2016.06, Rizhao No.1 Middle School of Shangdong, Rizhao.

💬 Invited Talks

• 2022.10, Online oral presentation, IROS2022

💻 Internships

• 2022.06 - 2022.09, JD, Program development engineer, Beijing