Hey; thanks for dropping by!

I currently work as a Doctoral researcher at the Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability, and Trust (SnT) of the University of Luxembourg. I conduct research in Computer Vision, Situational Awareness, and Robotics, investigating possible solutions to make robots more intelligent and aware of their surroundings with the aid of vision sensors.

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๐Ÿ“š Fields of Interest

Computer Vision, Situational Awareness, Deep Learning, Robotics, Information Retrieval

๐ŸŒŽ Languages
English English C1
French Flag French B1
German Flag German A1
Luxembourgish Flag Luxembourgish A1
Arabic Flag Arabic A2
Turkish Flag Turkish A2
Persian Flag Persian Mother Tongue

๐Ÿ† Honors and Awards

Securing a Fully Funded Position in a Ph.D. Program

Acknowledged for securing a competitive position in a Ph.D. program amidst a pool of candidates for the project "TRANSCEND" funded by the Institute for Advanced Studies (IAS), University of Luxembourg (Mar. 2022)

The highest GPA among all Computer Engineering Students (Class of 2016)

Achieved the highest Grade Point Average (GPA) among all Computer Engineering students of the University of Guilan, Iran, in the class of 2016 for three consecutive semesters (Nov. 2017)

The Best Student Researcher Award

Issued by the Department of Computer Engineering of the University of Guilan, Iran, regarding the scientific and practical contributions and achievements as a student (Nov. 2017)

Scholarship for Master's in Computer Engineering

Granted through a nationwide examination process, competing among over 25,000 applicants (Sep. 2016)

Top-15 Business Planners Award

Issued by 10th Sheikh Bahai National Technopreneurship Competitions, Iran (May 2014)

Experiences

Education

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)

2022 - 2026 (expected)

Computer Science, University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg

  • Affiliation: SnT, Automation and Robotics Group (ARG)
  • Supervisor: Prof. Holger Voos
  • Project: TRansforming Autonomous Navigation, Swarm robotics, and Construction by ENcoding Data into surfaces (TRANSCEND)

Master of Science (M.Sc.)

2016 - 2019

Computer Engineering, University of Guilan, Iran

  • Department: Computer Engineering, Faculty of Engineering
  • Supervisor: Prof. Asadollah Shahbahrami
  • Thesis: Automatic Vehicle Speeding Violation Detection using Video Processing (more)
  • Graduation: Defended on January 20, 2019 (Score: A+)

Bachelor of Science (B.Sc.)

2009 - 2013

Computer Engineering, University of Guilan, Iran

  • Department: Computer Engineering, Faculty of Engineering
  • Project: An E-Ticketing System for Medical Clinics

Employment

Doctoral Researcher

2022 - now (full-time)

Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability, and Trust (SnT), Luxembourg

Conducting research to employ visual data to make robots more aware of their sorroundings (Situational Awareness) by forming digital twins

Full-Stack Developer

2019 - 2021 (full-time)

AVID Technology Development, Rasht, Guilan, Iran

Working on various international web projects using SOTA tools, including Next.js, React.js, GraphQL, Node.js, Elasticsearch, Neo4j, MongoDB, etc.

Research Software Engineer

2019 - 2021 (part-time)

Guilan Science and Technology Park Business Incubator, Rasht, Guilan, Iran

Conducting research on "Automatic Vehicle Detection & Trackingโ€

University Lecturer

2018 - 2021 (part-time)

University of Guilan, Rasht, Guilan, Iran

Instructing โ€œComputational Intelligenceโ€ (fours semesters) & โ€œComputer Engineering Laboratoryโ€ (one semester) courses to undergraduate students

Android and Web Developer

2016 - 2017 (full-time)

Andish Bonyan Fannavar Varna, Rasht, Guilan, Iran

Interactive E-Learning Content Developer

2013 - 2017 (contract)

IEHT Guilan Training Center, Rasht, Guilan, Iran

Projects

  • All
  • Robotics
  • Computer Vision
  • Recommender Systems
  • Other

vS-Graphs Framework

A real-time visual SLAM framework, providing hierarchical graph-based scene representations

iMarkers for Advanced Robotics

A new generation of fiducial markers for robotics, invisible to humans but detectable by robots

Movie Recommener System

A movie recommender system based on frame-level extracted visual features

Point-of-Interest (PoI) RecSys

Various Point-of-Interest (PoI) recommender system tools and frameworks

Iranis Dataset

A Large-scale dataset of Farsi digits and letters extracted from vehicle license plates

Deep Learning ALPR

An end-to-end vehicle license plate detection and character recognition system based on YOLO

Academic Recommendation System

A smart academic recommender system to assisst researchers in their career

Deep Learning-based Vehicle Detection

A deep learning-based vehicle detection framework based on Faster R-CNN algorithm

Vehicle Speed Measurement

A motion-based vehicle speed measurement application for speeding violation detection

Interactive E-Content Development

Developing interactive e-Learning materials for various companies and educational centers

Human Tracking for Bank Security

A suspicious individual activity detection and tracking system for bank security

Vehicle Count and Traffic Monitoring

A system designed to accurately count the number of passing vehicles and estimate traffic flow

Online Appointment Booking

An E-booking platform developed for medical clinics

Parsiab Search Engine

A localized search engine for Persian (Farsi) academic documents

E-Learning Platform for Pre-Schoolers

E-Learning Platform for Pre-Schoolers

An interactive E-Learning application for pre-schoolers

Publications

For the complete list, please check my Google Scholar profile.

2024

International Conferences

  • A. Tourani, S. Ejaz, H. Bavle, H. Voos, J.L. Sanchez-Lopez, and H. Voos, โ€œTowards Localizing Structural Elements: Merging Geometrical Detection with Semantic Verification in RGB-D Data,โ€ IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS'24) - 14th Workshop on Planning, Perception and Navigation for Intelligent Vehicles, Abu Dhabi, UAE, 2024 [Link - ArXiv]
  • A. Radwan, A. Tourani, H. Bavle, H. Voos, and J. L. Sanchez-Lopez, โ€œUAV-assisted Visual SLAM Generating Reconstructed 3D Scene Graphs in GPS-denied Environments,โ€ International Conference on Unmanned Aircraft Systems (ICUAS'24), Chania - Crete, Greece, 2024, pp. 1109-1116 [DOI - ArXiv]

Peer-review Journals

  • A. Tourani, H. Bavle, J. L. Sanchez-Lopez, D. AvลŸar, R. Munoz-Salinas, and H. Voos, โ€œVision-Based Situational Graphs Exploiting Fiducial Markers for the Integration of Semantic Entities,โ€ Robotics, vol. 13, no. 7, p. 106 [DOI - ArXiv]
  • B. Ghari, A. Tourani, A. Shahbahrami, G. Gaydadjiev, โ€œPedestrian Detection in Low-Light Conditions: A Comprehensive Survey,โ€ Image and Vision Computing [DOI - ArXiv]
  • A. Tourani, H. A. Rahmani, M. Naghiaei, and Y. Deldjoo, โ€œCAPRI: Context-Aware Interpretable Point-of-Interest Recommendation Framework,โ€ Software Impacts, vol. 19, p. 100606 [DOI -ArXiv]

2023

International Conferences

  • A. Tourani, H. Bavle, J. L. Sanchez-Lopez, R. Munoz-Salinas, and H. Voos, โ€œMarker-based Visual SLAM leveraging Hierarchical Representations,โ€ Proceeding of the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS'23) [DOI -ArXiv]
  • A. Tourani, H. Bavle, J. L. Sanchez-Lopez, R. Munoz-Salinas, and H. Voos, โ€œHierarchical Visual SLAM based on Fiducial Markers,โ€ International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA'23) - Workshop on Active Methods in Autonomous Navigation [PDF - ArXiv]

Peer-review Journals

  • H. Bavle, J. L. Sanchez-Lopez, C. Cimarelli, A. Tourani, and H. Voos, โ€œFrom SLAM to Situational Awareness: Challenges and Survey,โ€ Sensors, vol. 23, no. 10, p. 4849 [DOI - ArXiv - IF: 3.84 (Q1)]

2022

International Conferences

  • H.A. Rahmani, M. Naghiaei, A. Tourani, and Y. Deldjoo, โ€œExploring the Impact of Temporal Bias in Point-of-Interest Recommendation,โ€ Proceeding of the 16th ACM Conference on Recommender Systems (RecSys'22), pp. 598-603 [DOI - ArXiv - Code]
  • H.A. Rahmani, Y. Deldjoo, A. Tourani, and M. Naghiaei, โ€œThe Unfairness of Active Users and Popularity Bias in Point-of-Interest Recommendation,โ€ Proceeding of the International Workshop on Algorithmic Bias in Search and Recommendation (Bias@ECIR), vol. 1610, pp. 56-68 [DOI - ArXiv - Code - Web-page]
  • B. Ghari, A. Tourani, and A. Shahbahrami, โ€œA Robust Pedestrian Detection Approach for Autonomous Vehicles,โ€ Proceeding of the 8th Iranian Conference on Signal Processing and Intelligent Systems (ICSPIS), pp. 1-5, Behshahr, Iran [DOI - ArXiv]

Peer-review Journals

  • [๐Ÿ† Editor's Choice] A. Tourani, H. Bavle, J.L. Sanchez-Lopez, and H. Voos, โ€œVisual SLAM: What Are the Current Trends and What to Expect?โ€ Sensors, vol. 22, no. 23, p. 9297 [DOI - ArXiv - ECA Annoucement - IF: 3.84 (Q1)]
  • H. Agha, Y. Geng, X. Ma, D. AvลŸar, R. Kizhakidathazhath, Y.S. Zhang, A. Tourani, H. Bavle, J.L. Sanchez-Lopez, H. Voos, M. Schwartz, and J. P.F. Lagerwall, โ€œUnclonable Human-invisible Machine Vision Markers Leveraging the Omnidirectional Chiral Bragg Diffraction of Cholesteric Spherical Reflectors,โ€ Light: Science & Applications (Nature Publications), vol. 11, no. 309 [DOI - IF: 17.78 (Q1)]

2021

International Conferences

  • A. Tourani, S. Soroori, A. Shahbahrami, and A. Akoushideh, โ€œIranis: A Large-scale Dataset of Iranian Vehicles License Plate Characters,โ€ 5th International Conference on Pattern Recognition and Image Analysis, pp. 1-5, Kashan, Iran [DOI]

Peer-review Journals

  • S. Khazaee, A. Tourani, S. Soroori, A. Shahbahrami, and A. Akoushideh, โ€œAn Accurate Real-Time License Plate Detection Method Based On Deep Learning Approaches,โ€ International Journal of Pattern Recognition and Artificial Intelligence, vol. 35, no. 12, pp. 425-437 [DOI - IF: 1.37 (Q2)]

2020

International Conferences

  • S. Khazaee, A. Tourani, S. Soroori, A. Shahbahrami, and C.Y. Suen, โ€œA Real-Time License Plate Detection Method Using a Deep Learning Approach,โ€ International Conference on Pattern Recognition and Artificial Intelligence, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 12068, pp. 425-438, Zhongshan, China [DOI]

Peer-review Journals

  • A. Tourani, A. Shahbahrami, S. Soroori, S. Khazaee, and A. Akoushideh, โ€œA Robust Deep Learning Approach for Automatic Iranian Vehicle License Plate Detection and Recognition for Surveillance Systems,โ€ IEEE Access, vol. 8, pp. 201317-201330 [DOI - IF: 3.36 (Q1)]

2019

International Conferences

  • A. Tourani, S. Soroori, A. Shahbahrami, S. Khazaee, and A. Akoushideh, โ€œA Robust Vehicle Detection Approach based on Faster R-CNN Algorithm,โ€ 4th International Conference on Pattern Recognition and Image Analysis, pp. 119-123, Tehran, Iran [DOI]
  • S. Soroori, A. Tourani, and A. Shahbahrami, โ€œEmploying Deep Learning Approach for Automatic License Plate Recognition: A Review,โ€ 3rd International Conference on Soft Computing, Rudsar, Iran [RG]

Peer-review Journals

  • A. Tourani, A. Shahbahrami, A. Akoushideh, S. Khazaee, and A. Akoushideh, โ€œMotion-based Vehicle Speed Measurement for Intelligent Transportation Systems,โ€ International Journal of Image, Graphics, and Signal Processing, vol. 11, no. 4, pp. 42-54 [DOI]
  • A. Joe Afshany, A. Tourani, A. Shahbahrami, S. Khazaee, and A. Akoushideh, โ€œParallel Implementation of a Video-based Vehicle Speed Measurement System for Municipal Roadways,โ€ International Journal of Intelligent Systems and Applications, vol. 11, no. 11, pp. 25-37 [DOI]

2017

International Conferences

  • A. Tourani, A. Shahbahrami, and A. Akoushideh, โ€œChallenges of Video-Based Vehicle Detection and Tracking in Intelligent Transportation Systems,โ€ 1st International Conference on Soft Computing, Rudsar, Iran [RG]

2015

International Conferences

  • A. Tourani, and A. Shahbahrami, โ€œVehicle Counting Method Based on Digital Image Processing Algorithms,โ€ 2nd International Conference on Pattern Recognition and Image Analysis, pp. 1-6, Rasht, Iran [DOI]

Co-Authors

Prof. H. Voos
Professor - University of Luxembourg
Prof. J. Lagerwall
Professor - University of Luxembourg
Prof. R. Munoz-Salinas
Professor - University of Cordoba
Prof. A. Shahbahrami
Professor - University of Guilan
Prof. C.Y. Suen
Professor - Concordia University
Prof. Y. Deldjoo
Assistant Professor - Polytechnic University of Bari
Dr. J.L. Sanchez-Lopez
Research Scientist - University of Luxembourg
Dr. H. Bavle
Research Associate - University of Luxembourg
Dr. C. Cimarelli
Research Associate - University of Luxembourg
Dr. S. Khazaee
Research Associate - Concordia University
Dr. A. Akoushideh
Assistant Professor - Technical and Vocational University
Dr. H. Agha
Research Associate - University of Luxembourg
H.A. Rahmani
Doctoral Researcher - University College London
D. AvลŸar
Doctoral Researcher - University of Luxembourg
M. Naghiaei
PhD Candidate - University of Southern California
S. Soroori
Researcher - University of Guilan

Review Activity

For the complete list, check my Web of Science profile.

International Conferences

  • IEEE InternSational Conference on Robots and Automation (ICRA'25) (link)
  • IEEE InternSational Conference on Robots and Automation (ICRA'24) (link)
  • IEEE International Conference on Automation Science and Engineering (CASE'24) (link)
  • ACM International Conference on Information and Knowledge Management (CIKM'24) (link)
  • IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS'23) (link)
  • ACM International Conference on Information and Knowledge Management (CIKM'23) (link)
  • International Conference on Computer Science and Application Engineering (CSAE'23) (link)
  • The Sixth Iberian Robotics Conference (ROBOT'23) (link)

Peer-reviewed Journals

Contents and Materials

University Lecture Materials

Course materials, presentations, and videos for the courses lectured for undergraduate students

Talks and Presentations

Talks, invited lectures, and presentations in various events

Blog - What's New?

Check my Blog for the complete list of the recent updates.

Happy to share that our paper has been accepted in 14th Workshop on Planning, Perception and Navigation for Intelligent Vehicles in IROS'24 (pre-print)!

Paper Acceptance in "IROS'24"!

October 07, 2024 at 12:30

I am excited to share that our paper titled "Vision-Based Situational Graphs Exploiting Fiducial Markers for the Integration of Semantic Entities" is publicly available in Robotics (DOI)!

Paper Publication in "Robotics"!

July 16, 2024 at 10:30

๐Ÿ† I am thrilled to share that our survey paper has been selected as an "Editor's Choice Article" in MDPI Sensors journal (annoucement, link to the paper)!

Editor's Choice Article in "MDPI Sensors"!

July 05, 2024 at 11:30

I am very happy to annouce that our paper has been accepted and available in Elsevier's Image and Vision Computing journal (pre-print, DOI)!

Paper Acceptance in "IVC"!

June 11, 2024 at 22:30

I am happy to share that our paper has been accepted for presentation in the ICUAS'24 conference (read the pre-print)! See you in Chania, Greece!

Paper Acceptance in "ICUAS'24"!

April 04, 2024 at 10:30

I am happy to annouce that we will present our Late Breaking Results on the ongling project vS-Graphs at ICRA'24 conference!

Presentation in "ICRA'24"!

April 01, 2024 at 15:00

Happy to say that my author-level metric (h-index) reached 10 with 250+ citations on Google Scholar, reflecting my collaborations' impact in the community.

Academic Milestone Reached!

October 09, 2023 at 11:00

I am enthusiastic to annouce that our paper has been accepted for presentation in the main track of the IROS'23 Conference (read the pre-print)!

Paper Acceptance in "IROS'23"!

July 24, 2023 at 17:30

I am happy to annouce that our paper has been accepted for presentation in the workshop of Active Methods in Autonomous Navigation in ICRA 2023 (read the paper)!

Paper Acceptance in "ICRA'23"!

June 02, 2023 at 16:30

I am thrilled to share that our survey focusing on Situational Awareness in Robotics has been published in MDPI Sensors journal (read the paper)!

Paper Acceptance in "Sensors"!

May 15, 2023 at 14:30

Contact Me

Feel free to reach out through email or find me on the Web ! ๐Ÿค

Address

29 boulevard JFK, L-1855 Luxembourg

JFK, E04 421

Email

ali [dot] tourani [at] uni [at] lu