Participation in IEEE MetaCom 2025

By admin | Conference report, ITS, SDM | Comments are Closed | 2025-09-01 | 0

From August 27–29, 2025, Dr. Naren Bao, Shangkai Zhang (D3), and Dr. Alex Orsholits participated in the 3rd Annual IEEE International Conference on Metaverse Computing, Networking, and Applications (MetaCom 2025), held at Sejong University, Seoul, Republic of Korea.

Dr. Bao presented “4D Path Planning via Spatiotemporal Voxels in Urban Airspaces.” The work introduces a 4D (space-time) voxel representation aligned with Spatial ID to model dynamic urban airspaces for UAV routing. By combining offline pretraining and online fine-tuning in a reinforcement-learning pipeline, the method plans safe, efficient flight paths amid static structures and dynamic obstacles using PLATEAU city models. Reported results show gains in safety (greater obstacle clearance) and efficiency (shorter, smoother paths) compared to classical planners and baseline RL.

Shangkai Zhang presented “AWSIM-VR: A Tightly-Coupled Virtual Reality Extension for Human-in-the-Loop Pedestrian–Autonomous Vehicle Interaction.” AWSIM-VR integrates a VR pedestrian with the AWSIM simulator and Autoware to enable real-time, bidirectional interactions where a pedestrian’s behavior influences AV perception, planning, and external HMI responses. A comparative user study indicated higher perceived realism and interaction fidelity versus scripted approaches, supporting more credible eHMI evaluation and AV behavior studies.

In addition, Dr. Naren Bao and Dr. Alex Orsholits served as session chairs:

Conference Session 5: Testbeds, Experiments, Use-Cases, and Evaluation (Chair: Dr. Naren Bao)
Conference Session 6: Blockchain and Web 3.0 (Chair: Dr. Alex Orsholits)

We thank the organizers and participants for a productive conference and the valuable feedback that will inform our ongoing research in urban air mobility, simulation, and human-centric AV interaction.

Publications

Zhang, Shangkai, Orsholits, Alex, Javanmardi, Ehsan, Tsukada, Manabu, "AWSIM-VR: A Tightly-Coupled Virtual Reality Extension for Human-in-the-Loop Pedestrian-Autonomous Vehicle Interaction", In: 3rd Annual IEEE International Conference on Metaverse Computing, Networking, and Applications (IEEE MetaCom 2025), Seoul, Republic of Korea, 2025.Proceedings Article | Abstract | Links | BibTeX

@inproceedings{Zhang2025,

title = {AWSIM-VR: A Tightly-Coupled Virtual Reality Extension for Human-in-the-Loop Pedestrian-Autonomous Vehicle Interaction},

author = {Shangkai Zhang and Alex Orsholits and Ehsan Javanmardi and Manabu Tsukada},

url = {https://github.com/zhangshangkai/AWSIM-VR},

year  = {2025},

date = {2025-08-27},

urldate = {2025-08-27},

booktitle = {3rd Annual IEEE International Conference on Metaverse Computing, Networking, and Applications (IEEE MetaCom 2025)},

address = {Seoul, Republic of Korea},

abstract = {Effective communication between autonomous vehicles (AVs) and pedestrians is crucial for ensuring future urban traffic safety. While external Human-Machine Interfaces (eHMIs) have emerged as promising solutions, current evaluation methodologies — particularly Virtual Reality (VR)-based studies — typically rely on scripted or pre-defined autonomous vehicle behaviors, limiting realism and neglecting pedestrians' active role in interactions. To address this, we introduce AWSIM-VR, a tightly-coupled VR extension of the AWSIM autonomous driving simulator, enabling real-time, human-in-the-loop pedestrian-AV interactions by directly integrating unmodified, real autonomous driving software (Autoware) into the simulation loop. Unlike previous systems, AWSIM-VR provides authentic, bidirectional interaction: pedestrians' actions dynamically influence vehicle decision-making and eHMI responses in real-time, closely emulating real-world AV scenarios. In user studies directly comparing AWSIM-VR to existing methodologies, participants reported significantly higher perceived realism and immersion, underscoring the importance of authentic autonomous behaviors in VR-based pedestrian interaction research. By directly utilizing production-level autonomous driving stacks, AWSIM-VR represents a significant methodological advancement, enabling more realistic, effective, and safer development and evaluation of eHMIs and AV technologies.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {inproceedings}

}

Bao, Naren, Orsholits, Alex, Tsukada, Manabu, "4D Path Planning via Spatiotemporal Voxels in Urban Airspaces", In: 3rd Annual IEEE International Conference on Metaverse Computing, Networking, and Applications (IEEE MetaCom 2025), Seoul, Republic of Korea, 2025.Proceedings Article | Abstract | BibTeX

Conference report, ITS, SDM

Presentations and Keynotes at IEEE IV2025

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Members of the Tsukada Laboratory recently participated in the 36th IEEE Intelligent Vehicles Symposium (IV2025), held in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, from June 22nd to 25th, 2025. This prestigious conference brought together leading researchers and practitioners in the field of intelligent vehicles. Representing our laboratory were Professor Tsukada, Professor Javanmardi, and Ph.D. students Yun Li and Yuze Jiang. It was also a pleasure to reconnect with Mikel García, a former visiting Ph.D. student, at the event. Our team made significant contributions to the symposium through two paper presentations and two keynote talks. Ph.D. student Yun Li presented “PrefDrive: Enhancing Autonomous Driving through Preference-Guided Large Language Models,” a novel framework that uses largeRead more
Honorable Mention Award at IEEE VR 2025

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We are pleased to announce that Dr. Alex ORSHOLITS presented his poster titled “Edge Vision AI Co-Processing for Dynamic Context Awareness in Mixed Reality” at the IEEE VR 2025 conference in Saint-Malo, France. This research demonstrates a scalable approach to improving spatial computing and dynamic environmental awareness in Mixed Reality by leveraging edge-based AI co-processing with low-power hardware accelerator and the Magic Leap 2 headset The presented system simultaneously ran five vision AI models (YOLOv8s, CenterPose, FastDepth, SCRFD, and ArcFace) at 30 frames per second, streaming and displaying detection results on a Magic Leap 2 headset in real-time and with minimal latency. This poster was awarded an Honorable Mention, oneRead more
Participation in IEEE ITSC 2024 International Conference

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We are pleased to announce that Yun Li, a second-year doctoral student, and Yuze Jiang, a first-year doctoral student, represented Tsukada Lab at the IEEE ITSC 2024 conference, held in Edmonton, Canada, from September 24 to 27, 2024. The 27th IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Transportation Systems (IEEE ITSC 2024) serves as the flagship event of the IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Society (ITSS), gathering researchers from around the globe to share advancements in the field of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS). Yun Li’s Presentation: Yun Li presented a paper titled “Large Language Models for Human-like Autonomous Driving Decision Making: A Survey.” This research emphasizes the potential of Large Language Models (LLMs)Read more
IEEE ITSC 2024 Workshop: Vision Language Model Based Human-Centered Autonomous Driving

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The ITSC2024 workshop, titled “Vision Language Model Based Human-Centered Autonomous Driving”, was organized by Tsukada lab’s Prof. Naren and Prof. Javanmardi, alongside Prof. Alexander Carballo (Gifu University), and Prof. Cristina Johannes (Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria). The workshop explored the integration of vision language models (VLMs) into autonomous driving, with a focus on human factors in decision-making, safety, and interaction. The event featured five presentations, each covering unique aspects of human-centered autonomous driving technology. Summary of Presentations: Automated Vehicle Driver Monitoring Dataset from Real-World Scenarios Integrating Naturalistic Insights in Objective Multi-Vehicle Safety Framework Presenter: Enrico Del Re, Research Assistant, Johannes Kepler University Linz Enrico discussed the use of real-world dataRead more
Participation in Auto-UI 2024 Conference

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We are excited to share that Vishal Chauhan, a Doctoral student (D1), recently presented his research at the prestigious Auto-UI 2024 conference. The presentation, titled “Transforming Pedestrian and Autonomous Vehicles Interactions in Shared Spaces: A Think-Tank Study on Exploring Human-Centric Designs,” explored innovative solutions for enhancing pedestrian and autonomous vehicle (AV) interactions using Smart Pole Interaction Units (SPIU) and external human-machine interfaces (eHMIs). The study involved 25 participants who brainstormed design solutions to improve the effectiveness, simplicity, visibility, and clarity of pedestrian-AV interactions. Key findings highlighted the preference for real-time interaction through SPIUs over eHMIs on AVs in various scenarios. However, the combined use of both SPIUs and eHMIs proved crucial for building trust in autonomous decision-making.Read more