ZHU, Weixu

I am currently a PhD student at IRIDIA Université libre de Bruxelles, Belgium,My supervisor is Prof. Marco Dorigo. In 2017 and 2014, I received my master degree and bachelor degree, respectively, in computer science, Wuhan University, China.

Research

My research interest lies in swarm intelligence and swarm robotics. Over the course of my PhD in IRIDIA, I will focus my research efforts on swarm construction.

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Swarm Construction

My PhD topic is "Swarm Construction: Stigmergy-based Coordination of a Swarm of Robots that Cooperate in Building an Artifact". I work with Michael Allwright and Prof. Marco Dorigo on SRoCS, a multi-robot construction platform.

This picture comes from "Allwright M, Bhalla N, Pinciroli C, et al. Towards Autonomous Construction using Stigmergic Blocks. Technical report TR/IRIDIA/2017-003. Brussels, Belgium: IRIDIA, Université libre de Bruxelles, 2017. URL http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/IridiaTrSeries/index.php, 2017."

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Stigmergy simulation

In my previous research, I partially implemented a swarm of robots that built a rectangular shape using stigmergy, which laid the foundation for my current research.

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Virtual physics-based design

The virtual physics-based design method draws inspiration from the behavior of physical particles. Each robot is considered as a virtual physical particle with a virtual potential energy field around it, which exerts virtual forces on its neighbouring robots. In my research, I proposed the passive field dynamics method, where a swarm of robots arranges itself into complex lattice configurations.

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Publications

Several of my publications are listed below:

Related to swarm robotics:

Weixu Zhu, Zhiyong Yuan. Passive Field Dynamics Method: an Advanced Physics-based Approach for Formation Control of Robot Swarm. The Eight International Conference on Swarm Intelligence. 2017, Fukuoka, Japan.

Weixu Zhu, Zhiyong Yuan. Azimuth-dependent and Flux-conserved Force Field Model: A New Control Method for Robot Swarm. Proceedings of IEEE International Conference on Information and Automation, 2016: 1426-1431.

Other:

Weixu Zhu, Zhiyong Yuan, Qianqian Tong. Coil Magnetic Field Characteristics Analysis and Coil Spatial Pose Calculation in Magnetic Haptic Feedback. Journal of Electronic Measurement and Instrumentation, 2016, (2016.04):590-597.

Zheng M, Yuan Z, Zhu W, et al. A fast mass spring model solver for high-resolution elastic objects[J]. SIMULATION, 2017: 0037549717699073.

Zheng M, Yuan Z, Tong Q, et al. A novel unconditionally stable explicit integration method for finite element method[J]. The Visual Computer, 2017: 1-13.

Qianqian Tong, Zhiyong Yuan, Mianlun Zheng, Weixu Zhu, Guian Zhang, Xiangyun Liao. A Novel Magnetic Levitation Haptic Device for Augmentation of Tissue Stiffness Perception. Proceedings of the 22nd ACM Conference on Virtual Reality Software and Technology. ACM, 2016: 143-152.

Erhu Chen, Zhiyong Yuan, Zejiang Yu, Xiangyun Liao, Weixu Zhu. Modeling, Simulation and Implementation of Electromagnetic Force Feedback in Virtual Surgery System. Journal of System Simulation, 2014, 26(9): 2003-2008.

Interest & Hobby

I am a huge fan of classical guitar. I have been learning classical guitar for more than 10 years and have attended several concerts.

I have also taken on interest in ants keeping. I am fascinated by the behavior of these little creatures, which are the inspiration on my research in swarm intelligence and swarm robotics

Contact Me

Address

Currently I live in Brussel. You can reach me through:

IRIDIA Lab

Université Libre de Bruxelles

50, Av. F. Roosevelt, CP 194/6

B-1050 Brussels, Belgium

European Union.

It is on the 5th floor of Building C in Campus de Solbosch of ULB

E-mail

My E-mail address: weixu.zhu@ulb.ac.be