Dr Victor Romero Cano

(he/him)

Overview

I am a Lecturer in the School of Computer Science and Informatics, within the Human-centred computing research unit. 

Born in Palmira, Colombia, I have worked in robotics and Machine Learning (ML) for over a decade. I studied mechatronics engineering at Universidad Autónoma de Occidente (UAO) in Cali Colombia. In 2008, I moved to Brazil, where I pursued an MSc in electrical engineering with a focus on systems engineering at the Polytechnic School of the University of São Paulo. For my master's dissertation, and under the supervision of Oswaldo Luiz do Valle Costa, I developed algorithms for creating digital representations of tree-populated environments from 2D-laser data collected by a team of mobile robots. In 2011, I moved to Australia and joined the Australian Centre for Robotics and Rio Tinto Centre for Mine Automation (RTCMA) at the University of Sydney, where I pursued my doctoral studies thanks to a scholarship provided by the mining giant Rio Tinto. During my Ph.D. and under the supervision of Juan I Nieto and Gabriel Agamennoni, I developed technologies for detecting, tracking, and classifying objects in complex dynamic environments by exploiting the multi-modal nature of stereo-vision data.

In 2015, after completing my PhD, I continued my association with RTCMA to develop Geographical Information System (GIS) and ML techniques for automatic analysis and pattern discovery in the operating and traffic state of Rio Tinto’s mines. In 2016, I moved to France to work as a post-doctoral researcher, within the Cooperative and Human-aware Robot Navigation in Dynamic Environments (CHROMA) team on a joint project between Toyota Motor Europe and Inria Grenoble, under the supervision of Christian Laugier. My contributions aimed at developing Camera-LiDAR object recognition technologies for urban driving applications. I worked on fusing image and laser data for improved object recognition in the context of urban perception from mobile platforms, leveraging the team’s occupancy grid mapping work, along with PGM’s and Deep Learning methods. I also collaborated with the team on decision-making-oriented projects.

In 2017 I joined the Faculty of Engineering of Universidad Autónoma de Occidente (UAO), Colombia, as a robotics and machine learning professor. I faced the challenges of building a robotics laboratory from the ground up, and designing up-to-date robotics and robotic perception modules that allowed engineering students to develop a career path with an emphasis on the computational aspects of robotics. As a result, during my five years at UAO, I led the establishment of the university's Robotics and Autonomous Systems laboratory. In 2019, thanks to the Republic of Turkey’s Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, I spent one month in Izmir, Turkey as an Invited Scientist at the Olive Research Institute working on plant phenotyping using computer vision. In 2022 and 2023, I worked in the Autonomous Driving R&D Department at Rimac Technology, a Croatia-based company that designs, engineers, and produces high-performance electric vehicle components and systems. In my role as an AI/Perception manager, I led a team working on embedded machine learning and multi-sensor perception techniques for both environment and driver monitoring. I also collaborated closely with motion control and human factors researchers.