CUHK Research: Changing the world

has been one of the most important research topics for me,” he says. Professor Liu has long established himself in the field of logistics robots, with his team’s signature innovation, the world’s leading vision-based autonomous forklift launched in 2016. Over the years, more than 350 projects have been deployed around the globe by VisionNav Robotics, which was founded by Professor Liu and his PhD students as the spin-off of the centre. The forklifts, now deployed in a wide range of industries, have been programmed to run as unmanned storage facilities with racks of up to 9.4 metres high. They can handle tasks including loading and unloading, sorting and packaging, taking the tasks over from human workers and help reduce costs and risks of injury. Professor Liu started to develop the smart forklift at the start of the e-commerce boom around 2010. He understood that while the logistics industry faced a manpower shortage, online shopping orders were wide-ranging and personalised, posing a big challenge to efficiency. “If the warehouse tasks can be automated, and artificial intelligence can fill in where human decision-making is needed, the bottleneck can be solved.” Computer vision, a field of artificial intelligence that enables machines to derive and analyse information from visuals, is the technical foundation that enables automated navigation of robots and also a topic Professor Liu has studied for 20 years. The team, initially comprising Professor Liu and four of his PhD students, developed a smart guidance system that can convert manual forklifts into automated ones. The system is equipped with a three-dimensional vision that collects real-time data on the surroundings for guidance and positioning. The vehicle, with a gripper system, can navigate and carry goods around a complex and unreferenced depot with high precision and safety without human intervention. 13