Bio

I am an Assistant Professor at the College of Intelligence Science and Technology, National University of Defense Technology (NUDT), China. Before that, I was a postdoctoral researcher (2020) at Department of Computer Science, University of Oxford. I received Ph.D. in Computer Science (2016-2020) from University of Oxford, supevised by Prof. Niki Trigoni and Prof. Andrew Markham, Master in Engineering (2014-2016) from National University of Defense Technology, and Bachelor in Engineering (2010-2014) from the Tongji University, China.

My research interests focus on Robotics and Embodied AI, particularly the challenges of Open-World Navigation. Traditional robotic algorithms often depend on meticulously crafted geometric and dynamic models, which may struggle to adapt to ever-changing, complex environments. My research demonstrates that developing learning solutions over these static models enables autonomous systems to achieve independent motion estimation, robust spatial scene perception, and reliable, safe navigation. My work involves a combination of novel algorithms and methods (including learning and statistics, signal processing, optimization, geometry, and dynamics modelling) and system implementations (including sensor fusion, hardware-software codesign, computing architecture). My research outcomes have been successfully applied to a diverse range of platforms, from robots, drones, self-driving vehicles to smartphone, smartwatches, and VR/AR devices, supporting their real-world applications in intelligent transportation, emergency rescue and hospital efficiency enhancement.

My major contributions have been in the following research directions:

Egocentric Motion Tracking: we pioneer deep learning-based inertial positioning models that provide precise motion estimation and positioning in GPS-denied environments, regardless of environmental influences, including IONet, LIO-Net, and MotionTransformer.

Robust Spatial Perception: our research develops novel learning and geometric methods for lifelong self-supervised learning based SLAM (e.g., DK-SLAM, SelfOdom, P2Net, DevNet), city-scale localization and rendering (e.g., AtLoc, DroneNeRF, MatLoc-NeRF), and visually-degraded perception (e.g., Milli-Map, Milli-Ego, DeepTIO, and mID).

Safe Autonomous Navigation: our research develops task-driven multimodal fusion, stability-constrained dynamical modelling, and efficient policy learning, for safe robot navigation in the physical world, including SelectFusion, DynaNet and SGuidance.

Embodied AI: our recent research focuses on efficient foundation model for robot navigation policy learning, and LLM based global planning.

• Multimodal Knowledge Fusion and Life-Long Learning for Micro Navigation Systems
  Principle Investigator, 2021-2024, Youth Program, National Natural Science Foundation of China (NFSC)
• ACE-OPS: From Autonomy to Cognitive Assistance in Emergency Operations
  Postdoctoral Research Associate, 2019-2022, Engineering and physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), UK
• Pervasive, Accurate, and Reliable LBS for Emergency Responders
  Participant, 2017-2020, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), USA

• Advanced Navigation Technology, National University of Defense Technology - Spring Term 2022 (Lecturer)
• Machine Learning, University of Oxford - Michaelmas Term 2018 (Teaching Assistant)
• Intelligent Systems, University of Oxford - Michaelmas Term 2017 (Teaching Assistant)

• Young Elite Scientist Sponsorship Program China Association for Science and Technology, 2023
• Fengru Best Paper Award Nominee International Conference on Guidance, Navigation and Control (ICGNC), 2022
• Young Talents Fund of High-level Innovation Talents Supporting Program National University of Defense Technology, 2022
• RSS Pioneers Robotics: Science and Systems, 2020
• Best Paper Award Nominee International Conference on Distributed Computing in Sensor Systems (DCOSS), 2019
• Outstanding Paper Award Luoyang Conference on Inertial Technology, 2016

• Changhao Chen, Ronald Clark, Andrew Markham, Niki Trigoni. Determining a location of a mobile device. WO (granted)/EP (granted)/US (granted) Patent
• Changhao Chen, Lilian Zhang, Xianfei Pan, Xiaofeng He, Hao Qu, Zheming Tu, Jun Mao, Chen Fan, Xiaoping Hu. Scale self-recovery visual inertial integrated navigation method and device. CN114993306A. CN Patent (granted)
• Changhao Chen, Xianfei Pan, Xiaofeng He, Fangyan Li, Chaoqun Chu, Jun Mao, Chen Fan, Lilian Zhang, Xiaoping Hu. Fire scene smoke scene positioning and mapping method and device based on millimeter wave radar inertia combination. CN114994672A. CN Patent (granted)
• Changhao Chen, Fangyan Li, Xiongfei Wang, Xiaofeng He, Chaoqun Chu, Xianfei Pan, Jun Mao, Lilian Zhang, Chen Fan, Xiaoping Hu. Self-supervision learning solid-state laser radar three-dimensional semantic mapping method and device. CN115421158A. CN Patent (granted)
• Changhao Chen, Zheming Tu, Xianfei Pan, Xiaoping Hu, Xiaofeng He, Lilian Zhang, Jun Mao, Chen Fan. Pedestrian vision and inertia combined navigation method and device based on flexible attention mechanism. CN114894184A. CN Patent (in application)
• Xianfei Pan, Zongyang Chen, Changhao Chen, Chaoqun Chu, Zheming Tu, Lilian Zhang, Xiaoping Hu, Wenqi Wu. Pedestrian positioning method based on smart phone PDR and vision correction. CN115235455A. CN Patent (granted)
• Xianfei Pan, Zheming Tu, Changhao Chen, Lilian Zhang, Chaoqun Chu, Zongyang Chen, Jun Mao, Maosong Wang. Pedestrian motion constraint visual inertial fusion positioning and mapping method and device. CN115235454B. CN Patent (granted)
• Xiaofeng He, Ke Liu, Jun Mao, Hao Qu, Xiaoping Hu, Lilian Zhang, Changhao Chen, Chen Fan. Unmanned aerial vehicle autonomous navigation method and system based on multi-source vision assistance. CN115127554A. CN Patent (granted)
• Xianfei Pan, Chaoqun Chu, Changhao Chen, Zheming Tu, Zongyang Chen, Xiaofeng He, Jun Mao, Xiaoping Hu. Pedestrian navigation positioning method and device based on laser radar and inertia combination. CN115164887A. CN Patent (in application)
• Chen Fan, Wenzhou Zhou, Xiaofeng He, Lilian Zhang, Jing Huang, Yin Fan, Zhenhao Guo, Yang Liu, Changhao Chen, Xuesong Wu, Xiaoping Hu. Bionic navigation visual sensor extinction ratio evaluation method based on sine fitting. CN115060292A. CN Patent (granted)
• Lei Wang, Xuhu Yu, Changhao Chen, Shasha Guo, Xun Xiao, Xiaofan Chen, Yuchen Qiu, Jianfeng Zhang, Wei Shi. Pulse neural network multi-mode lip reading method and system based on attention mechanism. CN115482582A. CN Patent (in application)
• Chen Fan, Yin Fan, Xiaofeng He, Wenzhou Zhou, Lilian Zhang, Xiaoping Hu, Jing Huang, Zhenhao Guo, Changhao Chen, Yang Liu. Navigation method based on generalized bionic polarized light navigation model and solution. CN115062770A. CN Patent (granted)

• Session Chair
  • International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA)
• Meta Reviewer
  • The Pioneers Workshop of Robotics: Science and Systems (RSS Pioneers)
• Program Commitee
  • Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS)
  • International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML)
  • The International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR)
  • The AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI)
• Conference Reviewer
  • International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS)
  • Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR)
  • International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV)
  • European Conference on Computer Vision (ECCV)
  • The Web Conference (WWW)
  • British Machine Vision Conference (BMVC)
• Review Editor
  • Frontiers in Robotics and Artificial Intelligence
• Journal Reviewer
  • IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control (TAC)
  • IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing (TMC)
  • IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems (TNNLS)
  • IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement (TIM)
  • IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L)
  • IEEE Internet of Things Journal (IoT-J)
  • IEEE Sensors Journal
  • Neural Computing
  • IEEE Communications Letters
  • ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing
  • Measurement and Control
  • Neural Networks
  • Pattern Recognition
  • IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems (TITS)
  • IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Vehicle (TIV)
  • IEEE Transactions on Mechatronics
  • Robotics and Autonomous Systems
  • Computer Vision and Image Understanding
  • Satellite Navigation
  • International Journal on Robotics Research (IJRR)
  • International Journal of Computer Vision (IJCV)

• Member of Chinese Association of Automation 2021-
• Member of Chinese Society of Inertial Technology 2021-
• Member of IEEE 2018-
• Member of Pembroke College, Oxford 2016-2020
• The Vice President of Oxford China Forum 2019
• The Academic Officer of Pembroke MCR Committee 2018-2019