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DATA8017 - Fundamentals of Autonomous Intelligent Systems

Course Instructor

Professor Hongyang LI

Assistant Professor
HKU Musketeers Foundation Institute of Data Science

Professor Hongyang Li is an Assistant Professor in HKU Musketeers Foundation Institute of Data Science and Research Scientist at OpenDriveLab, Shanghai AI Lab. His research focus is on autonomous driving and embodied AI. He led the end-to-end autonomous driving project, UniAD and won the IEEE CVPR 2023 Best Paper Award. UniAD has a large impact both in academia and industry, including the recent rollout to customers by Tesla in FSD V12. He proposed the bird’s-eye-view perception work, BEVFormer, that won Top 100 AI Papers in 2022 and was explicitly recognized by Jensen Huang, CEO of NVIDIA and Prof. Shashua, CEO of Mobileye at public keynotes. He served as Area Chair for CVPR 2023, 2024, NeurIPS 2023 (Notable AC), 2024, ACM MM 2024, ICLR 2025, referee for Nature Communications. He will serve as Workshop Chair for CVPR 2026. He is the Working Group Chair for IEEE Standards under Vehicular Technology Society and Senior Member of IEEE.

Course Description

This course aims at introducing the fundamentals in algorithms, data and systems of the autonomous intelligent systems, which often refers to the autonomous driving and robotics applications. As the fast advances in the field of AI, how to utilize the learning-based, data-driven approaches to improve the applications for the better human life, becomes very pivotal. We will address the key challenges in this domain, such as (i) how to formulate a system that is equipped with generalization, intelligence and reliability merits. (ii) How to balance the data distribution between simulation and real-world data. (iii) Is scaling law the only pathway towards high-level AGI.

We will introduce the concepts, principles and knowhow to build the autonomous intelligent systems. The basic fundamentals would be detailed in the lectures, with tutorials and hands-on training sessions. All the important topics will be covered, such as imitation learning, reinforcement learning, and so on, with a focus on the applications in autonomous driving and robotics. The highlights in this course would consist of several guest lectures from outside renowned speakers from both industry and academiato address the latest advances in this field. The hands-on session is akin to tutorials or hackathons where students learn the recipe of technologies from scratch quickly. These features would be complementary to the main lecture and facilitate the final group presentation.

The course includes 2 hours of lectures (by the instructor or guest lecture) and 1 hour discussion/tutorial/hands-on session (by a TA) per week. Homework includes both written exercises and programming.

Prerequisites 

The basic programming skill is needed, e.g. python and C++.

We require students to have prior knowledge in undergraduate linear algebra, statistics, and probability. Background in machine learning, and computer vision may allow you to better appreciate certain aspects of the course material, but not necessarily all at once.

The course is open to research postgraduates (i.e. MPhil, PhD). Senior undergraduates (Year 2 to 4) are welcome, with consent from the instructor. If you’re curious about whether you would benefit from this course, contact the instructor for details.