Contact Information
Stephen L. Smith Professor Canada Research Chair in Autonomous Systems Co-Director, Waterloo Artificial Intelligence Institute Director, Autonomous Systems Lab Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering University of Waterloo |
200 University Avenue West Waterloo, ON N2L 3G1, Canada Email: stephen.smith@uwaterloo.ca Tel: +1 (519) 888-4567 x31215 Office: E5 5112 |
Stephen L. Smith is a Canada Research Chair in Autonomous Systems and a Professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Waterloo where he directs the Autonomous Systems Lab. He is co-director of the Waterloo Artificial Intelligence Institute. He was a postdoctoral researcher in the Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Lab at MIT. He completed his PhD at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), his Master's at the University of Toronto, and his B.Sc. at Queen's University, Kingston. He is a licensed Professional Engineer (PEng) with the Professional Engineers Ontario, a Senior Member of the IEEE, and an associate editor of the IEEE Transactions on Robotics. His research focuses on control,optimization and artificial intelligence for autonomous systems and robotics.
Research Interests
Dr. Smith's research interests are in the control of autonomous systems, robot motion planning and coordination, along with applied combinatorial optimization. The following are some current areas of focus:
- Learning in decision making and control: learning control and decision-making strategies.
- Robot planning under uncertainty: planning and perception for operation in unknown environments.
- Persistent monitoring and scene reconstruction: environmental monitoring and mapping in complex environments.
- Future transportation systems: coordinating and dispatching vehicles for ride-sharing and urban transportation.
- Human-robot interaction: coordinating robots to work with humans in task specification and collaborative assembly.
- Distributed and submodular optimization: Collective decision making strategies for objectives that exhibit diminishing returns.
- Other areas of interest include dynamic vehicle routing, informative path planning, task allocation, formation control, consensus/rendezvous and ocean sampling.
To learn more, visit the Autonomous Systems Lab website.
Teaching
Book:-
Lectures in Robotic Planning and Kinematics, by F. Bullo and S. L. Smith.
Work in progress, current version is v0.93, Jan 2022
- MTE 481/482: Mechatronics Engineering Project (Fall 2023, Winter 2024).
- ECE406: Algorithm Design and Analysis (Winter 2013 - 2018, 2020, 2022).
- ECE380: Analog Control Systems (Winter 2012, 2015, Spring 2016, Winter 2018, 2019, 2021).
- ECE 686: Filtering and Control of Stochastic Linear Systems (Winter 2017, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2024).
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ECE486: Robot Dynamics and Control (Spring 2013).
- ECE780 T08: Topics in Motion Coordination and Planning (Spring 2011, 2012, 2013, 2015, 2017).
- ME179P: Introduction to Robotics: Planning and Kinematics (Fall 2014 at UC Santa Barbara).
Professional Service
Current:- Local Arrangements Chair, 2024 American Control Conference in Toronto, Canada, 2022 -- Present
- Associate Editor, IEEE Transactions on Robotics, 2022 -- Present
- Associate Editor, IEEE Open Journal of Control Systems, 2021 -- present
- Associate Editor, IEEE Transactions on Control of Networks Systems, 2017 -- 2022
- General Co-Chair, 30th IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication, Vancouver BC (Held virtually), Aug 18-12, 2021
- Area Chair, IEEE International Symposium on Multi-Robot and Multi-Agent Systems (MRS), 2021
- Program Committee Member, Workshop on the Algorithmic Foundation of Robotics (WAFR), 2012, 2014, 2016, 2018, 2020
- Associate Editor, IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2014 -- 2016, 2019
- Associate Editor, IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2016, 2019
- Associate Editor, IEEE Control Systems Society, Conference Editorial Board, 2013 -- 2019
- Program Committee Member, ACM/SIGAPP Symposium on Applied Computing Track on Intelligent Robotics and Multi-Agent Systems , 2018
- Program Committee Member, Robotics: Science and Systems (RSS), 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019
- Program Committee Member, International Symposium on Distributed Autonomous Robotic Systems (DARS), 2014, 2016
- Program Committee Member, Conference on Computer and Robot Vision (CRV), 2012, 2013, 2014
- Control and Robotics Symposium Chair, IEEE Canadian Conference on Electrical & Computer Engineering, Montreal, Canada, May 2012