Hi! I'm Kai-Chieh Ma, I am a master graduate specializing in intelligent robotics at Department of Computer Science from University of Southern California.

Research Interests: Robotics, Aquatic Robots, Planning Algorithms, Machine learning, Multi-robots, Reinforcement Learning, Robot Vision

NEWS: My paper "Informative Planning and Online Learning with Sparse Gaussian Processes" was accepted to ICRA 2017 on 1/15 !!!

NEWS: My new journal paper "Data-Driven Learning and Planning for Environmental Sampling" was accepted to Journal of Field Robotics on 10/13/2017

About Me

I'm very interested in practical applications of robotics. This includes the application of robot soccer, personal robot, unmanned vehicles, etc. Robotics itself covers a wide range of disciplines like computer science, mechanical systems, and electrical engineering, etc. Within these disciplines, I'm most familiar with the area of computer science. Therefore, my specific interests include AI planning, machine learning (especially reinforcement learning), and computer vision. My ultimate goal is to build robots which can run autonomously and robustly in an uncertain and dynamic environment. In order to handle the uncertainty issue, I'm also interested in some probabilistic approach like Bayes filter and Markov decision processes. I am looking forward to having these hands-on experience in my future career.

Education

University of Southern California

Computer Science (Intelligent Robotics), Viterbi School of Engineering

Master of Science, 2015 - 2017

GPA: 3.8/4.0

National Taiwan University

Computer Science & Information Engineering, College of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS)

Bachelor of Science, 2008 - 2012

Rank: 39/105

Work Experience

University of Southern California

Robotic Embedded Systems Laboratory (RESL)

Research Student Worker, Oct 2015 - current

Cyberlink Corp.

PowerDVD team, Department of Media Entertainment

Software Engineer, Aug 2012 - Mar 2014

Publications

  1. "An Information-Driven and Disturbance-Aware Planning Method for Long-Term Ocean Monitoring"

    Kai-Chieh Ma, Lantao Liu, Gaurav S. Sukhatme.

    IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2016). Deajeon, Korea. Oct, 2016.

    Best Application Paper Award Finalist (out of 4), also Best Student Paper Award Finalist (out of 6)

  2. "Multi-Robot Informative and Adaptive Planning for Persistent Environmental Monitoring"

    Kai-Chieh Ma, Zhibei Ma, Lantao Liu, Gaurav S. Sukhatme.

    International Symposium on Distributed Autonomous Robotic Systems (DARS 2016). London, UK. Nov 2016.

  3. "Multi-robot Informative Planning for Long-Term Ocean Monitoring"

    Kai-Chieh Ma, Lantao Liu, Gaurav S. Sukhatme.

    IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA 2016) Workshop: AI for Long-term Autonomy. Stockholm, Sweden. May, 2016.

  4. "A Hierarchical Informative Path Planning Method for Ocean Monitoring"

    Kai-Chieh Ma, Lantao Liu, Gaurav S. Sukhatme.

    The 1st Southern California Robotics Symposium (SCR 2016). San Diego, CA. Apr 2016.

  5. "Informative Planning and Online Learning with Sparse Gaussian Processes"

    Kai-Chieh Ma, Lantao Liu, Gaurav S. Sukhatme.

    To appear in IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA 2017). (ArXived)

  6. "Data-Driven Learning and Planning for Environmental Sampling"

    Kai-Chieh Ma, Lantao Liu, Hordur K. Heidarsson, Gaurav S. Sukhatme.

    Submitted to Journal of Field Robotics. (ArXived)

Research

Informative Planning and Online Learning for Environmental Monitoring

An Information-Driven and Disturbance-Aware Planning Method for Long-Term Ocean Monitoring
Multi-Robot Informative and Adaptive Planning for Persistent Environmental Monitoring
Informative Planning and Online Learning with Sparse Gaussian Processes

Projects

Contact

Feel free to ask me any questions!
Email: markcsie@gmail.com
GitHub: https://github.com/markcsie