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The 29th IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Transportation Systems (IEEE ITSC 2026), the flagship conference of the IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Society, was held from September 15 to 18, 2026 in Naples, Italy. The venue was the Stazione Marittima, the cruise terminal on the port, with Castel Nuovo on one side and the ferries to Capri on the other, and about 1,100 registered participants moving between its sixteen parallel rooms for four days. From Tsukada Lab, three papers appear in the proceedings, and Assoc. Prof. Manabu Tsukada gave a keynote at the DriveX workshop and an invited talk at workshop W19, which he also helped organize. Castel Nuovo, next toRead more

ICRA 2026 (IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation), held June 1–5 at Messe Wien, Vienna, Austria, was under the theme “Robots for All”. It lived up to its reputation as the largest robotics research conference in the world, and the Vienna setting made the experience all the more memorable. The city’s historic charm provided a fitting backdrop for discussions about the cutting edge of technology, with the grand coffee houses and imperial architecture offering a striking contrast to the autonomous systems and AI-driven machines filling the exhibition floors. The program was dense and inspiring — plenary and keynote sessions, contributed paper sessions, workshops, tutorials, forums, and a lively expoRead more

On June 4, 2026, Associate Professor Manabu Tsukada delivered a keynote talk at the 3rd MEIS Workshop on Multi-Agent Embodied Intelligent Systems Meet Generative-AI Era: Opportunities, Challenges and Futures, held in conjunction with CVPR 2026 in Denver, Colorado, USA. Professor Tsukada was also invited to speak at the first MEIS Workshop, co-located with ECCV 2024 in Milan, Italy, where he presented “Cooperative Autonomous Mobility through Open Standards and Real-World Experiments.” His invitation to the third MEIS Workshop at CVPR 2026 reflects the continued relevance of TLab’s work on V2X communication, cooperative autonomous driving, roadside infrastructure, and real-world experimentation within the MEIS community. Keynote Talk Title: Cooperative Intelligence for Autonomous Driving:Read more

Tsukada Lab, The University of Tokyo — Evaluation Platform Sub-Team Prof. Manabu Tsukada, Prof. Ehsan Javanmardi, March 2026 A five-year bet that cars and roads should talk to each other When the CooL4 project began in 2021, Level-4 autonomy on open Japanese streets was still a distant promise. By the time it closed at the end of March 2026, a driverless bus was turning right through a busy intersection in Kashiwa-no-ha — guided, in part, by sensors bolted to the traffic signals overhead. CooL4 — the Cooperative Level 4 activity of Japan’s national RoAD to the L4 programme (Theme 4) — set out to answer a specific, stubborn question: inRead more

The 6th Summer School on Cooperative Interacting Vehicles (CIV 2026) will take place from August 31 to September 4, 2026, at the Phoenix Seagaia Resort in Miyazaki, Japan — the first time in Asia. CIV is an intensive five-day program for PhD students, early-career researchers, and young industry professionals. This year’s themes include Cooperative Perception and Motion Planning, Implicit and Explicit Interaction, and Modeling and Data-Driven Methods (AI / Foundation Models). Confirmed lecturers include Prof. Christoph Stiller (KIT), Prof. Alexander Carballo (Gifu University / Autoware), Prof. Daniel Shih (NTU CSIE / TIER IV), and Ryohsuke Mitsudome (TIER IV / Autoware Foundation Lead). The program features lectures, interactive poster sessions, a data hackathon with real-world cooperative driving datasets, cultural andRead more

Tsukada Lab’s D3 student Vishal Chauhan attended CHI 2026 (ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems) in Barcelona, Spain, from 13 to 17 April 2026. CHI is one of the most important international conferences in the field of Human-Computer Interaction. Researchers, students, and industry members from many countries gathered there to share new ideas and recent research. It was a valuable opportunity for him to learn about new work and meet people from different research communities. At the conference, Vishal presented the paper titled “Don’t Worry, Just Follow Me: Prototyping and In-the-Wild Evaluation of Smart Pole Interaction Unit with Mobility.” This research focuses on how the Smart Pole InteractionRead more

We’re thrilled to share the exciting news that two of our research submissions have been accepted for presentation at the upcoming ACM CHI conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2026. This prestigious event will take place in Barcelona, Spain, around April 13th, 2026. Furthermore, we are incredibly proud to announce that both of these papers have been honored with an Honourable Mention Award! This is a highly prestigious recognition granted to only the top 5% of all paper submissions, highlighting the exceptional quality of the research at the world’s premier conference on Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). This exciting event will take place in Barcelona, Spain, around April 13th, 2026. EachRead more

We are pleased to announce that two papers from Tsukada Laboratory have been accepted to the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation 2026 (ICRA 2026). ICRA is one of the flagship international conferences in robotics and automation, and ICRA 2026 will be held in Vienna, Austria, from June 1 to 5, 2026. The first paper, “A Synthetic Benchmark for Collaborative 3D Semantic Occupancy Prediction in V2X-Enabled Autonomous Driving,” presents a synthetic benchmark for collaborative 3D semantic occupancy prediction in autonomous driving. The work addresses the limitations of single-vehicle perception, such as occlusion, limited sensing range, and narrow viewpoints, by enabling collaborative perception through shared information among agents. The paperRead more

Associate Professor Manabu Tsukada, Assistant Professor Ehsan Javanmardi, and Ph.D. candidate (D3) Huan Meng participated in the IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITSC 2025), held in Gold Coast, Australia, in November 2025. ITSC is one of the leading international conferences in the intelligent transportation systems field, bringing together researchers from around the world for discussions on the latest research and technological advances. During the conference, Associate Professor Tsukada delivered a keynote talk titled “Adaptive V2X Collaboration for End-to-End Autonomous Driving” at the DriveX Workshop, presenting recent progress in cooperative autonomous driving technologies. Ph.D. candidate Huan Meng also presented his research, “Patch Exploration-Based Route Planning for Autonomous Vehicles,” whichRead more

From November 11–14, 2025, the ACM Symposium on Virtual Reality Software and Technology (VRST 2025) was held in Montreal, Canada. Vishal Chauhan (D3) and Yu Asabe (D1) from our laboratory, and Anubhav (D3) from the Department of Mathematical Informatics attended the conference. Researchers from many countries presented work on virtual reality, interaction techniques, and simulation platforms, and there were active discussions in both oral and poster sessions. Our team presented the full paper “A Silent Negotiator? Cross-cultural VR Evaluation of Smart Pole Interaction Units in Dynamic Shared Spaces.” The study introduces the Smart Pole Interaction Unit (SPIU), an infrastructure-based interface that shows clear “STOP/GO” signals to help pedestrians decide whenRead more

Members of the Tsukada Laboratory attended the International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV) 2025, held in Honolulu, Hawai‘i, from October 19th to 23rd, 2025. ICCV is one of the leading international conferences in the field of computer vision and brings together researchers from around the world. Ph.D. student Hao Si presented a poster titled “You Share Beliefs, I Adapt: Progressive Heterogeneous Collaborative Perception.” The study examines the challenge of heterogeneity in collaborative perception for autonomous driving and proposes an approach that enables a vehicle model to adapt its parameters during inference without prior joint training. Project Researcher Yue Yin attended several workshops related to visual localization, including Multi-Modal Localization andRead more

Tsukada Laboratory (T-Lab), The University of Tokyo, is pleased to announce the public release of the URT-Kashiwa Dataset, a novel driving dataset designed to support research on unprotected right turns, one of the most challenging maneuvers for autonomous vehicles. About the Dataset The URT-Kashiwa Dataset (Unprotected Right Turn, Kashiwa Campus) provides high-quality recordings of driving scenarios specifically focused on unprotected right turns—an essential case study for understanding decision-making in urban traffic. These scenarios are widely recognized as among the most difficult for autonomous driving systems to handle, given the need to negotiate with both oncoming vehicles and pedestrians. While unprotected left turns are a major focus in European traffic contexts,Read more

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,Read more

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

We are pleased to announce that the 5th Summer School on Cooperative Interacting Vehicles (CIV2025) will take place from September 1st to 5th, 2025 in Blonay, Switzerland. This international summer school provides a learning and networking environment for students, early-career researchers, and professionals working on cooperative mobility, autonomous systems, and AI-driven intelligent transportation. Participants will have the opportunity to learn directly from experts in the field and engage in discussions on topics such as cooperative perception, motion planning, human-vehicle interaction, and data-driven methods. The event is organized under the leadership of Prof. Arnaud de La Fortelle. Our laboratory’s Associate Professor Manabu Tsukada is a member of the organizing committee andRead more

We are delighted to share that Vishal Chauhan, a member of our Tsukada Laboratory, and Anubhav from the Department of Mathematical Informatics, participated in the prestigious OzCHI’24 Student Design Challenge (SDC). This renowned event was held at the OzCHI conference in Brisbane, Australia, from November 30 to December 4, 2024. The conference serves as an international hub for Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and cutting-edge research. The SDC centered on the theme Beyond Being Human, exploring how HCI extends beyond human interactions to encompass AI and the natural world. Vishal and Anubhav presented their innovative design solution, Reimagining Smart Poles: A Sustainable Interface for Pedestrian-AV Ecosystems. Their idea, which features sustainable smartRead more

The 2024 Tsukada Lab CRONOS Symposium, funded by JST’s CRONOS program, served as a kickoff event for collaborative discussions on advancing communication platforms that integrate vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2X) systems with large language models (LLMs) and VR simulation technologies. This symposium, part of the project Evolutionary Communication Infrastructure Connecting Diverse Mobile Devices and Humans, aimed to foster dialogue among researchers and practitioners on developing efficient bidirectional interactions between humans and embodied AI. Keynote Presentations Manabu Tsukada (Associate Professor, The University of Tokyo) opened the symposium with a presentation on the development of adaptive communication platforms that connect diverse mobility systems with human-centric applications. Prof. Tsukada highlighted how next-generation communicationRead more

Dr. Manabu Tsukada was invited to speak at the 1st Workshop on Cooperative Intelligence for Embodied AI, co-located with the 18th European Conference on Computer Vision (ECCV 2024), in Milan, Italy, on September 30th, 2024. This workshop focused on how cooperative intelligence can enhance multi-agent systems in autonomous driving and robotics. Dr. Tsukada’s presentation, titled “Cooperative Autonomous Mobility through Open Standards and Real-World Experiments,” explored how Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) communication and Roadside Perception Units (RSPUs) are transforming autonomous mobility. By integrating open standards, his talk demonstrated how cooperative perception and maneuver coordination can significantly improve the safety and efficiency of autonomous vehicles. The workshop provided a platform for discussing the challengesRead more

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

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