Ning Ding

The Chinese University of Hong Kong，Shenzhen · Institute of Robotics and Intelligent Manufacturing

Large-scale one-dimensional (1D) waveguide surface grating arrays enable smaller antenna pitches and larger apertures for the OPAs. However, broad wavelength tuning is required for wide-angle beam steering along the transverse θ direction for 1D waveguide antennas. High-resolution and wide-angle beam steerings at visible and NIR wavelengths have no...

This paper presents a modified oriented bounding box method and a compound control law for the developed intelligent demolition robot working safely and accurately in a high-radiation environment. Combining statics and kinematics, the modified oriented bounding box method is applied to predict the real-time and accurate collision detection of possi...

Facial perception and cognition are among the most critical functions of retinal prostheses for blind people. However, owing to the limitations of the electrode array, simulated prosthetic vision can only provide limited pixel images, which seriously weakens the image semantics expression. To improve the intelligibility of face images with limited...

Supervised learning algorithms have shown limited use in the field of anomaly detection due to the unpredictability and difficulty in acquiring abnormal samples. In recent years, unsupervised or semi-supervised anomaly-detection algorithms have become more widely used in anomaly-detection tasks. As a form of unsupervised learning algorithm, generat...

The concentric cable-driven manipulator is becoming increasingly important in minimally invasive surgery. Obviously, one of the basic requirements is to track trajectory and avoid collision at the same time. However, the unavoidable difficulty is to choose an inverse kinematics solution that fits inside the confined environment from infinitely many...

Two-dimensional beam steering on silicon nitride nanophotonic phased arrays from visible to near-infrared wavelengths is reported for the first time. Steering range of 66° in θ direction and 13.1° in ψ direction is achieved.

In this article, we review the state of the art in hyper-redundant manipulators for applications in confined space such as on -orbit services. With their multiple degrees of freedom and slender links, hyper-redundant manipulators can offer superior dexterity and excellent operability. They can traverse freely, manipulate objects flexibly, and con...

Quadruped locomotion is currently a vibrant research area, which has reached a level of maturity and performance that enables some of the most advanced real-world applications with autonomous quadruped robots both in academia and industry. Blind robust quadruped locomotion has been pushed forward in control and technology aspects within recent deca...

Quadruped locomotion is currently a vibrant research area, which has reached a level of maturity and performance that enables some of the most advanced real-world applications with autonomous quadruped robots both in academia and industry. Blind robust quadruped locomotion has been pushed forward in control and technology aspects within recent deca...

Capsule networks have drawn increasing attention since the concept is proposed in 2011. They hold advantages over convolutional neural networks (CNNs) on modeling part-to-whole relationships between entities and learning viewpoint invariant representations. A variety of improved designs and applications related to capsule networks have been explore...

In this Letter, a two-dimensional (2D) beam steering on silicon nitride (SiNx) nanophotonic phased arrays from visible to near-infrared wavelengths is reported for the first time, to the best of our knowledge. In order to implement beam steering along the transverse direction for one-dimensional waveguide surface grating arrays, wavelengths from 65...

Dynamic quadrupedal locomotion over rough terrains reveals remarkable progress over the last few decades. Small-scale quadruped robots are adequately flexible and adaptable to traverse uneven terrains along the sagittal direction, such as slopes and stairs. To accomplish autonomous locomotion navigation in complex environments, spinning is a fundam...

Quadruped locomotion is currently a vibrant research area, which has reached a level of maturity and performance that enables some of the most advanced real-world applications with autonomous quadruped robots both in academia and industry. Blind robust quadruped locomotion has been pushed forward in control and technology aspects within recent deca...

This study focuses on the multiphase flow properties of crowd motions. Stability is a crucial forewarning factor for the crowd. To evaluate the behaviors of newly arriving pedestrians and the stability of a crowd, a novel motion structure analysis model is established based on purposiveness, and is used to describe the continuity of pedestrians’ pu...

Recent achievements in the field of computer vision, reinforcement learning, and locomotion control have largely extended legged robots’ maneuverability in complex natural environments. However, little research focuses on sensing and analyzing the physical properties of the ground, which is crucial to robots’ locomotion during their interaction wit...

A hopping leg, no matter in legged animals or humans, usually behaves like a spring during the periodic hopping. Hopping like a spring is efficient and without the requirement of complicated control algorithms. Position and force control are two main methods to realize such a spring-like behaviour. The position control usually consumes the torque r...

As a kind of generative self-supervised learning methods, generative adversarial nets have been widely studied in the field of anomaly detection. However, the representation learning ability of the generator is limited since it pays too much attention to pixel-level details, and generator is difficult to learn abstract semantic representations from...

Quadruped robots manifest great potential to traverse rough terrains with payload. Numerous traditional control methods for legged dynamic locomotion are model-based and exhibit high sensitivity to model uncertainties and payload variations. Therefore, high-performance model parameter estimation becomes indispensable. However, the inertia parameter...

Dynamic quadrupedal locomotion over rough terrains, although revealing remarkable progress over the last few decades, remains a challenging task. Small-scale quadruped robots are adequately flexible and adaptable to traverse numerous uneven terrains, such as slopes and stairs, while moving along its Sagittal direction. However, spinning behaviors o...

This paper presents CCRobot-IV, the fourth version of a climbing robot designed for bridge cable-inspection tasks. CCRobot-IV inherits design features from the previous CCRobot series, and has improved capability for crossing cables with obstacles such as helical ribs, small metal accessories, and various other obstacles. CCRobot-IV consists of a q...

Superior dexterity and extreme flexibility are typical advantages for concentric cable-driven manipulators working in confined spaces. However, its inverse kinematics and configuration planning are very complicated. In this article, we propose a spatial biarc method for the above problem. The distinguishing feature of this method is that input para...

Hybrid Rigid-Continuum Space Robots are “couple strength and gentleness” and therefore more adaptable to the environment and mission. However, compared to traditional discrete multi-jointed space robots, this multi-type manipulator coexistence system has a more complex system model. The coordination planning between different types of manipulators...

Effective sensitivity within a large responding range is a crucial parameter of flexible tactile sensors for a robot, especially for engineering climbing robots under high shear force conditions. While introducing microstructures can improve the sensitivity, in turn, it leads to a limited pressure-response range due to the poor structural compressi...

Fabrication and assembly of flexible sensors and soft actuators play important roles in improving the performance of wearable electronics and soft robots. Traditional manufacturing techniques have limitations in controlling the geometry and architecture of many soft actuation and sensing systems, which compromise their performance as well as applic...

Live work in a distribution network is limited due to factors such as the large size of the insulated bucket-arm truck and the necessity of flat ground. This paper proposes a hybrid arm-based live-line auxiliary working robot for live working in a distribution network. One-button automatic leveling can be achieved by applying remote control and loc...

Fast and accurate road damage detection is essential for the automatization of road inspection. This paper describes our solution submitted to the Global Road Damage Detection Challenge of the 2020 IEEE International Conference on Big Data, for typical road damage detection in digital images based on deep learning. The recently proposed YOLOv4 is c...

Robotic mechanical weed control is a promising solution to reduce the usage of herbicides. Efficient and accurate detection of crop stems is the premise of most robotic mechanical weeding machines. This paper proposes a unified convolutional neural network model, called UniStemNet, for real-time crop recognition and stem detection. The UniStemNet c...

Flexible pressure sensors present great potential in the application of human health monitoring, tactile function of prothesis, and electronic skin for robotics. These applications require a different trade-off between sensitivity and sensing range; therefore, it is imperative to develop multidimensional sensitivities in a single sensor. In this pa...

This paper investigates the cooperative moving-target enclosing control problem of networked unicycle-type nonholonomic vehicles with constant linear velocities. The information of the target is only known to some of the vehicles, and the topology of the vehicle network is described by a directed graph. A dynamic control law is proposed to steer th...

This paper investigates the cooperative target enclosing of multiple unicycle-type mobile robots subject to input disturbances. The objective is to make all robots orbit around a given stationary target, and maintain evenly spaced along a common circle. The network of the multirobot systems is set in a cyclic pursuit manner. A dynamic control law i...

This project aims at developing a bio-inspired climbing robotic technology for cable inspection on the cable-stayed bridge. The design and implementation of a palm-based cable climbing robot: CCRobot-II with mass 25 kg, maximal payload 30kg and maximal length 1.1 m are described. CCRobot-II consists of several novel design features, including the p...

In this paper, a novel mechanical design for a cable climbing robot called CCRobot is presented. The CCRobot is capable of attaching on a cable with a small range of curvature and some obstacles. The weight of CCRobot is less than 15 kg, and its load capacity is more than 30 kg. Its maximum motion speed is more than 0.05 m/s. The grippers of CCRobo...

This paper presents a novel shape representation approach, Finite Element Skeleton (FES), based on studies of planar shape analysis from the perspective of Finite Element Method (FEM). First, we derive the shape contour of an object in image with edge detection approach. Then, the approach builds connections of all pixels on the shape contour with...

This paper1 presents a novel shape representation approach, Finite Element Contour (FEC), based on studies of shape analysis from the perspective of Finite Element Method (FEM). We assume that an edge of a contour can be modeled as a bendable beam element. Linking finite number of beam elements end to end along the contour, we obtain a closed-loop...

This paper presents a novel shape representation approach based on Finite Element Region (FER). We assume an image blob can be treated as a mesh model that consists of a finite number of deformable quadrilateral pixel elements. These elements connecting side by side form an approximate physical model of the surface of real object. By employing Fini...

As one of the most unique types of art in Chinese culture, nowadays Chinese calligraphy is attracting increasing interests from researchers. It will be a big step if we have a robot to write Chinese calligraphy, especially in various styles, and it will form a bridge to combine science with art directly. However, there are so many different types a...

With the substantial increase of vehicles on road, driving safety and transportation efficiency have become increasingly concerned focus from drivers, passengers, and governments. Wireless networks constructed by vehicles and infrastructures provide abundant information to share for the sake of both enhanced safety and network efficiency. This pape...

As the most critical function of mobile robots, navigation substantially relies on self-localization. Among all the approaches, vision based localization is widely adopted. Unlike the complex algorithms developed before, we present a simple real-time visual localization approach which regards the circular lamps on the ceiling as the landmarks. Two...

With the increase of vehicle amount all over the world, vehicle safety has become a tremendous problem. Chained accidents, which result in numerous losses of lives and properties, happen due to the fact that the following drivers are unaware of the accident occurrence. In this paper, a real-time vehicle safety system is proposed. A prototype test p...

This paper presents a video surveillance system which can detect and deal with typical abnormal behaviors on Automatic Teller Machine (ATM), such as fraud and robbery, etc. Based on the case study of violent incident video records, a weighted kinetic energy extraction approach for violence identification is proposed. By using the new approach, the...

Video surveillance in crowd is challenging for public security. This paper focuses on the detection of human abnormal behaviors in crowd. The issue is crucial in some special localities and has been less studied. To achieve this goal, this paper defines a crowd energy based on Markov Random Fields. By using wavelet analysis of the energy curves, th...