I am a research scientist at the AI Institute in Zurich, developing the next generation intelligent robots.
Research: My research focuses on the intersection of computer vision, machine learning, and control theory. On one side, I am interested in representations that enable the efficient combination of scene understanding and decision-making algorithms. These can vary from bird's eye view scene and map understanding in autonomous driving to using NeRFs for active 3D reconstruction. On the other side, I am interested in learning safe multi-agent policies directly from data, using principles from control and game theory to guide the learning process. Such methods can, for example, directly learn driving policies from human driving data and can be used for motion prediction, interactive motion planning, or data-driven simulation. The combination of better representations and policy learning will allow us to develop models that pave the path for truly autonomous robotic systems.
Bio: I studied Mechanical Engineering at ETH Zurich, where I got my BSc and MSc in 2010 and 2013 respectively. In 2013 I started my PhD at the Automatic Control Lab at ETH Zurich under the supervision of John Lygeros, where I was working on safe and game theoretic motion planning for autonomous driving and autonomous racing. After finishing my PhD in 2018, I first worked as a PostDoc at the Automatic Control Lab before joining the Computer Vision Lab (CVL) at ETH Zurich in Luc Van Gool's group in 2019. During my time at CVL, I was working within the TRACE Toyota autonomous driving project, focusing on scene understanding for autonomous driving as well as imitation and reinforcement learning. During my time at CVL, I also started the lecture Deep Learning for Autonomous Driving together with Dengxin Dai, which we were teaching for three years with great success. From 2021 to 2024 I was a Principal Researcher in the computer vision team at the Huawei Research Center in Zurich. The work spanned from research into new camera sensors to shipping new algorithms to flag ship products. In 2024 I joined the newly formed Zurich office of the AI Institute (aka Boston Dynamics AI Institute), as part of the perception team.
@InProceedings{zhang2023real,
author = {Zhejun Zhang and Alexander Liniger and Christos Sakaridis and Fisher Yu and Luc Van Gool},
title = {Real-Time Motion Prediction via Heterogeneous Polyline Transformer with Relative Pose Encoding},
booktitle = {Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS)},
year = {2023},
}
@InProceedings{li2023cross,
author = {Lei Li and Alexander Liniger and Mario Millhaeusler and Vagia Tsiminaki and Yuanyou Li and Dengxin Dai},
title = {Object-centric Cross-modal Feature Distillation for Event-based Object Detection},
booktitle = {International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA)},
year = {2024},
}
@InProceedings{raji2023tricycle,
author = {Ayoub Raji and Nicola Musiu and Alessandro Toschi and Francesco Prignoli and Eugenio Mascaro and Pietro Musso and Francesco Amerotti and Alexander Liniger and Silvio Sorrentino and Marko Bertogna},
title = {A tricycle model to accurately control an autonomous racecar with locked differential},
booktitle = {arXiv.org},
year = {2023},
}
@InProceedings{camiletto2023ubev,
author = {Andrea Boscolo Camiletto and Alfredo Bochicchio and Alexander Liniger and Dengxin Dai and Abel Gawel},
title = {U-BEV: Height-aware Bird's-Eye-View Segmentation and Neural Map-based Relocalization},
booktitle = {arXiv.org},
year = {2023},
}
@InProceedings{raji2023erautopilot,
author = {Ayoub Raji and Danilo Caporale and Francesco Gatti and Andrea Giove and Micaela Verucchi and Davide Malatesta and Nicola Musiu and Alessandro Toschi and Silviu Popitanu and Fabio Bagni and Massimiliano Bosi and Alexander Liniger and Marko Bertogna and Daniele Morra and Francesco Amerotti and Luca Bartoli and Federico Martello and Riccardo Porta},
title = {er.autopilot 1.0: The Full Autonomous Stack for Oval Racing at High Speeds},
booktitle = {Field Robotics Journal},
year = {2023},
}
@InProceedings{can2023improving,
author = {Yigit Can and Alexander Liniger and Danda Paudel and Luc Van Gool},
title = {Improving online lane graph extraction by object-lane clustering},
booktitle = {Proc. of the IEEE International Conf. on Computer Vision (ICCV)},
year = {2023},
}
@InProceedings{can2023online,
author = {Yigit Can and Alexander Liniger and Danda Paudel and Luc Van Gool},
title = {Online Lane Graph Extraction from Onboard Video},
booktitle = {International Conference on Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITSC)},
year = {2023},
}
@InProceedings{can2023prior,
author = {Yigit Can and Alexander Liniger and Danda Paudel and Luc Van Gool},
title = {Prior Based Online Lane Graph Extraction from Single Onboard Camera Image},
booktitle = {International Conference on Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITSC)},
year = {2023},
}
@InProceedings{buhrer2023multiplicative,
author = {Nick Bührer and Zhejun Zhang and Alexander Liniger and Fisher Yu and Luc Van Gool},
title = {A Multiplicative Value Function for Safe and Efficient Reinforcement Learning},
booktitle = {International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS)},
year = {2023},
}
@InProceedings{zhang2023trafficbots,
author = {Zhejun Zhang and Alexander Liniger and Dengxin Dai and Fisher Yu and Luc Van Gool},
title = {TrafficBots: Towards World Models for Autonomous Driving Simulation and Motion Prediction},
booktitle = {International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA)},
year = {2023},
}
@InProceedings{can2022piecewise,
author = {Yigit Can and Alexander Liniger and Danda Paudel and Luc Van Gool},
title = {Piecewise Planar Hulls for Semi-Supervised Learning of 3D Shape and Pose from 2D Images},
booktitle = {arXiv.org},
year = {2022},
}
@InProceedings{can2021end,
author = {Yigit Can and Alexander Liniger and Danda Paudel and Luc Van Gool},
title = {End-to-End Learning of Multi-category 3D Pose and Shape Estimation},
booktitle = {British Maschine Vision Conference (BMVC)},
year = {2022},
}
@InProceedings{lee2022uncertainty,
author = {Soomin Lee and Le Chen and Jiahao Wang and Alexander Liniger and Suryansh Kumar and Fisher Yu},
title = {Uncertainty Guided Policy for Active Robotic 3D Reconstruction Using Neural Radiance Fields},
booktitle = {IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RAL)},
year = {2022},
}
@InProceedings{raji2022motion,
author = {Ayoub Raji and Alexander Liniger and Andrea Giove and Alessandro Toschi and Nicola Musiu and Daniele Morra and Micaela Verucchi and Danilo Caporale and Marko Bertogna},
title = {Motion Planning and Control for Multi Vehicle Autonomous Racing at High Speeds},
booktitle = {International Conference on Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITSC)},
year = {2022},
}
@InProceedings{ji2022deep,
author = {Ge-Peng Ji and Deng-Ping Fan and Yu-Cheng Chou and Dengxin Dai and Alexander Liniger and Luc Van Gool},
title = {Deep Gradient Learning for Efficient Camouflaged Object Detection},
booktitle = {Machine Intelligence Research},
year = {2022},
}
@InProceedings{betz2022autonomous,
author = {Johannes Betz and Hongrui Zheng and Alexander Liniger and Ugo Rosolia and Phillip Karle and Madhur Behl and Venkat Krovi and Rahul Mangharam},
title = {Autonomous Vehicles on the Edge: A Survey on Autonomous Vehicle Racing},
booktitle = {IEEE Open Journal of Intelligent Transportation Systems},
year = {2022},
}
@InProceedings{vazquez2022deep,
author = {Jose Vazquez Espinoza and Alexander Liniger and Wilko Schwarting and Daniela Rus and Luc Van Gool},
title = {Deep Interactive Motion Prediction and Planning: Playing Games with Motion Prediction Models},
booktitle = {Learning for Dynamics and Control Conference},
year = {2022},
}
@InProceedings{patil2022p3depth,
author = {Vaishakh Patil and Christos Sakaridis and Alexander Liniger and Luc Van Gool},
title = {P3Depth: Monocular Depth Estimation with a Piecewise Planarity Prior},
booktitle = {Proc. IEEE Conf. on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR)},
year = {2022},
}
@InProceedings{can2022topology,
author = {Yigit Can and Alexander Liniger and Danda Paudel and Luc Van Gool},
title = {Topology Preserving Local Road Network Estimation from Single Onboard Camera Image},
booktitle = {Proc. IEEE Conf. on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR)},
year = {2022},
}
@InProceedings{zaech2022adiabatic,
author = {Jan-Nico Zaech and Alexander Liniger and Martin Danelljan and Dengxin Dai and Luc Van Gool},
title = {Adiabatic Quantum Computing for Multi Object Tracking},
booktitle = {Proc. IEEE Conf. on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR)},
year = {2022},
}
@InProceedings{can2022understanding,
author = {Yigit Can and Alexander Liniger and Ozan Unal and Danda Paudel and Luc Van Gool},
title = {Understanding Bird's-Eye View of Road Semantics using an Onboard Camera},
booktitle = {IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RAL)},
year = {2022},
}
@InProceedings{patil2022improving,
author = {Vaishakh Patil and Alexander Liniger and Dengxin Dai and Luc Van Gool},
title = {Improving Depth Estimation Using Map-Based Depth Priors},
booktitle = {IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RAL)},
year = {2022},
}
@InProceedings{zaech2022learnable,
author = {Jan-Nico Zaech and Alexander Liniger and Dengxin Dai and Martin Danelljan and Luc Van Gool},
title = {Learnable Online Graph Representations for 3D Multi-Object Tracking},
booktitle = {IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RAL)},
year = {2022},
}
@InProceedings{zhang2021end,
author = {Zhejun Zhang and Alexander Liniger and Dengxin Dai and Fisher Yu and Luc Van Gool},
title = {End-to-End Urban Driving by Imitating a Reinforcement Learning Coach},
booktitle = {Proc. of the IEEE International Conf. on Computer Vision (ICCV)},
year = {2021},
}
@InProceedings{can2021structured,
author = {Yigit Can and Alexander Liniger and Danda Paudel and Luc Van Gool},
title = {Structured Bird's-Eye-View Traffic Scene Understanding From Onboard Images},
booktitle = {Proc. of the IEEE International Conf. on Computer Vision (ICCV)},
year = {2021},
}
@InProceedings{srinivasan2021holistic,
author = {Sirish Srinivasan and Sebastian Giles and Alexander Liniger},
title = {A Holistic Motion Planning and Control Solution to Challenge a Professional Racecar Driver},
booktitle = {IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RAL)},
year = {2021},
}
@InProceedings{rella2021decoder,
author = {Edoardo Rella and Jan-Nico Zaech and Alexander Liniger and Luc Van Gool},
title = {Decoder Fusion RNN: Context and Interaction Aware Decoders for Trajectory Prediction},
booktitle = {International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS)},
year = {2021},
}
@InProceedings{obukhov2021spectral,
author = {Anton Obukhov and Maxim Rakhuba and Alexander Liniger and Zhiwu Huang and Stamatios Georgoulis and Dengxin Dai and Luc Van Gool},
title = {Spectral Tensor Train Parameterization of Deep Learning Layers},
booktitle = {International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Statistics (AISTATS)},
year = {2021},
}
@InProceedings{chisari2021learning,
author = {Eugenio Chisari and Alexander Liniger and Alisa Rupenyan and Luc Van Gool and John Lygeros},
title = {Learning from Simulation, Racing in Reality},
booktitle = {International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA)},
year = {2021},
}
@InProceedings{prajapat2021competitive,
author = {Manish Prajapat and Kamyar Azizzadenesheli and Alexander Liniger and Yisong Yue and Anima Anandkumar},
title = {Competitive Policy Optimization},
booktitle = {Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence (UAI)},
year = {2021},
}
@InProceedings{vazquez2020optimization,
author = {Jose Vazquez and Marius Brühlmeier and Alexander Liniger and Alisa Rupenyan and John Lygeros},
title = {Optimization-Based Hierarchical Motion Planning for Autonomous Racing},
booktitle = {International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS)},
year = {2020},
}
@InProceedings{zaech2020action,
author = {Jan-Nico Zaech and Dengxin Dai and Alexander Liniger and Luc Van Gool},
title = {Action Sequence Predictions of Vehicles in Urban Environments using Map and Social Context},
booktitle = {International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS)},
year = {2020},
}
@InProceedings{hecker2020learning,
author = {Simon Hecker and Dengxin Dai and Alexander Liniger and Martin Hahner and Luc Van Gool},
title = {Learning Accurate and Human-Like Driving using Semantic Maps and Attention},
booktitle = {International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS)},
year = {2020},
}
@InProceedings{kabzan2020amz,
author = {Juraj Kabzan and Miguel Valls and Victor Reijgwart and Hubertus Hendrikx and Claas Ehmke and Manish Prajapat and Andreas Bühler and Nikhil Gosala and Mehak Gupta and Ramya Sivanesan and Ankit Dhall and Eugenio Chisari and Napat Karnchanachari and Sonja Brits and Manuel Dangel and Inkyu Sa and Renaud Dubé and Abel Gawel and Mark Pfeiffer and Alexander Liniger and John Lygeros and Roland Siegwart},
title = {AMZ Driverless: The Full Autonomous Racing System},
booktitle = {Journal of Field Robotics (JFR)},
year = {2020},
}
@InProceedings{liniger2020safe,
author = {Alexander Liniger and Luc Van Gool},
title = {Safe Motion Planning for Autonomous Driving using an Adversarial Road Model},
booktitle = {Robotics: Science and Systems (RSS)},
year = {2020},
}
@InProceedings{zhang2020optimization,
author = {Xiaojing Zhang and Alexander Liniger and Francesco Borrelli},
title = {Optimization-Based Collision Avoidance},
booktitle = {IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology},
year = {2020},
}
@InProceedings{hahner2020quantifying,
author = {Martin Hahner and Dengxin Dai and Alexander Liniger and Luc Van Gool},
title = {Quantifying Data Augmentation for LiDAR based 3D Object Detection},
booktitle = {arXiv.org},
year = {2020},
}
@InProceedings{balula2020reference,
author = {Samuel Balula and Alexander Liniger and Alisa Rupenyan and John Lygeros},
title = {Reference design for closed loop system optimization},
booktitle = {European Control Conference (ECC)},
year = {2020},
}
@InProceedings{liniger2019real,
author = {Alexander Liniger and Luca Varano and Alisa Rupenyan and John Lygeros},
title = {Real-Time Predictive Control for Precision Machining},
booktitle = {Conference on Decision and Control (CDC)},
year = {2019},
}
@InProceedings{hecker2019learning,
author = {Simon Hecker and Alexander Liniger and Henrik Maurenbrecher and Dengxin Dai and Luc Van Gool},
title = {Learning a Curve Guardian for Motorcycles},
booktitle = {International Conference on Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITSC)},
year = {2019},
}
@InProceedings{kabzan2019learning,
author = {Juraj Kabzan and Lukas Hewing and Alexander Liniger and Melanie Zeilinger},
title = {Learning-based Model Predictive Control for Autonomous Racing},
booktitle = {IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RAL)},
year = {2019},
}
@InProceedings{liniger2019noncooperative,
author = {Alexander Liniger and John Lygeros},
title = {A Noncooperative Game Approach to Autonomous Racing},
booktitle = {IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology},
year = {2019},
}
@InProceedings{novi2019real,
author = {Tommaso Novi and Alexander Liniger and Renzo Capitani and Claudio Annicchiarico},
title = {Real-time control for at-limit handling driving on a predefined path},
booktitle = {Vehicle system dynamics},
year = {2019},
}
@InProceedings{liniger2018path,
author = {Alexander Liniger},
title = {Path Planning and Control for Autonomous Racing},
booktitle = {Doctoral Thesis ETH Zurich},
year = {2018},
}
@InProceedings{novi2018influence,
author = {Tommaso Novi and Alexander Liniger and Renzo Capitani and Marco Fainello and Giacomo Danisi and Claudio Annicchiarico},
title = {The influence of autonomous driving on passive vehicle dynamics},
booktitle = {SAE International Journal of Vehicle Dynamics, Stability, and NVH},
year = {2018},
}
@InProceedings{hewing2018cautious,
author = {Lukas Hewing and Alexander Liniger and Melanie Zeilinger},
title = {Cautious NMPC with Gaussian Process Dynamics for Autonomous Miniature Race Cars},
booktitle = {European Control Conference (ECC)},
year = {2018},
}
@InProceedings{zhang2018autonomous,
author = {Xiaojing Zhang and Alexander Liniger and Atsushi Sakai and Francesco Borrelli},
title = {Autonomous Parking Using Optimization-Based Collision Avoidance},
booktitle = {Conference on Decision and Control (CDC)},
year = {2018},
}
@InProceedings{liniger2017racing,
author = {Alexander Liniger and Xiaojing Zhang and Philipp Aeschbach and Angelos Georghiou and John Lygeros},
title = {Racing miniature cars: Enhancing performance using Stochastic MPC and disturbance feedback},
booktitle = {American Control Conference (ACC)},
year = {2017},
}
@InProceedings{liniger2017real,
author = {Alexander Liniger and John Lygeros},
title = {Real-time Control for Autonomous Racing Based on Viability Theory},
booktitle = {IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology},
year = {2017},
}
@InProceedings{carrau2016efficient,
author = {Jesus Carrau and Alexander Liniger and Xiaojing Zhang and John Lygeros},
title = {Efficient implementation of Randomized MPC for miniature race cars},
booktitle = {European Control Conference (ECC)},
year = {2016},
}
@InProceedings{wirz2015aeolus,
author = {Jonas Wirz and Marco Tranzatto and Alexander Liniger and Marcello Colombino and Henrik Hesse and Sergio Grammatico},
title = {AEOLUS, the ETH Autonomous Model Sailboat},
booktitle = {World Robotic Sailing championship and International Robotic Sailing Conference},
year = {2015},
}
@InProceedings{tranzatto2015debut,
author = {Marco Tranzatto and Alexander Liniger and Sergio Grammatico and Alberto Landi},
title = {The debut of Aeolus, the autonomous model sailboat of ETH Zurich},
booktitle = {OCEANS},
year = {2015},
}
@InProceedings{liniger2015viability,
author = {Alexander Liniger and John Lygeros},
title = {A viability approach for fast recursive feasible finite horizon path planning of autonomous RC cars},
booktitle = {Hybrid Systems: Computation and Control (HSCC)},
year = {2015},
}
@InProceedings{liniger2015optimization,
author = {Alexander Liniger and Alexander Domahidi and Manfred Morari},
title = {Optimization-Based Autonomous Racing of 1:43 Scale RC Cars},
booktitle = {Optimal Control Applications and Methods},
year = {2015},
}
@InProceedings{liniger2012autonomous,
author = {Alexander Liniger},
title = {Autonomous Drift Control},
booktitle = {Master Thesis ETH Zurich},
year = {2012},
}
@InProceedings{schmidt2016accessory,
author = {Peer Schmidt and Roland Schaer and Alexander Liniger and David Leuzinger},
title = {Accessory of a machine drill and control method},
booktitle = {US Patent 9,289,833},
year = {2016},
}
@InProceedings{schmidt2014auxiliary,
author = {Peer Schmidt and Roland Schaer and Alexander Liniger and David Leuzinger},
title = {Auxiliary device of a drilling machine and control method},
booktitle = {US Patent 8,810,802},
year = {2014},
}
@InProceedings{schmidt2012accessory,
author = {Peer Schmidt and Roland Schaer and Alexander Liniger and David Leuzinger},
title = {Accessory For a Power Drill and Control Method},
booktitle = {US Patent App. 13/334,771},
year = {2012},
}
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