took one year to complete.<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cNo frustration,\u201d Sabouni said. \u201cJust sleepless nights.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nSabouni is a fifth-year Systems Engineering PhD student whose research focuses on safety-critical systems. When he started working with Ahmad on their award-winning paper, Sabouni said the process took much longer because they started from scratch.<\/span><\/p>\nTheir work was one of the first to implement event-triggered Control Barrier Function-based control on real hardware, so they had little reference, Ahmad said. Event-triggered control helps save resources by only acting when certain events happen. The CBF-based technique is used, for example, when robots operate in an open environment and on humans, where it should be ensured that the robots avoid obstacles safely, Ahmad added.<\/span><\/p>\nThe overall goal of their research was to implement a safe control system for traffic applications.<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cYou want to make the road safe again by using our safe controllers,\u201d Sabouni said. \u201cYou don’t want [autonomous agents] to collide with each other. You want them to operate in an optimal sense \u2026 without any compromise on safety.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nAhmad and Sabouni primarily focused on autonomous vehicles, or vehicles that do not need human drivers. A main challenge in traffic networks is \u2018conflict points\u2019\u2014areas where vehicles from different directions may intersect at the same time. Ensuring safety at these points was a major focus of their research.<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cIt is important to ensure that, while the cars arrive at these conflict points in the network, they do not crash into each other,\u201d Ahmad added. \u201cSo safety is really very important, and it is critical in this system as well.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nTo conduct this research successfully, the first stage in their process involved identifying suitable robots \u2013 understanding features and system models to implement the algorithms designed in Ahmad and Sabouni\u2019s lab. The next stage involved gradually implementing the algorithms and identifying what was not working \u2013 debugging the issues, Ahmad explained.<\/span><\/p>\nOnce implemented, the two SE students used multiple robots to \u201csimulate a traffic system with multiple agents running seamlessly, reaching their destination without colliding into each other,\u201d Ahmad said. If the robots run smoothly,\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nthen that means they are running safely and optimally because they are coordinating properly to reach their destinations.<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cNothing directly translates from simulations to physical, actual hardware. So there is always that bit of effort whereby you don’t directly see any fruits or results while working on the implementation,\u201d Ahmad said. \u201cBut over time, if you persevere, and through modifications to the actual theory, it is generally possible to make it work.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nFor the two PhD students, the last phase was about successfully running these algorithms and getting the results to write in their paper.<\/span><\/p>\nAt the core of their work was a strong motivation to improve real-world safety. \u201cThis is the beauty of working with colleagues and having a team around yourself of motivated people and people that \u2026 are really committed to finish the work,\u201d Sabouni reflected. \u201cAnd another thing is I\u2019m really passionate about this type of work, so this also can help get me through these difficult times.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n![\"Ehsan](\"\/eng\/files\/2025\/03\/Photo-477x636.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Theory and application is a back-and-forth dance. There are limitations with hardware, and it can be too expensive to try multiple times, Sabouni said. So, he and Ahmad developed their theories and tested them out in the lab environment to decide whether the algorithm was worth implementing on actual robots.<\/span><\/p>\nTheir work is largely based on developing novel ideas and validating them through simulations, Ahmad added. In order for these simulations to be useful or implementable in the real world, they need to validate them or implement them with existing hardware.<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cAs much as theory is important, it\u2019s also important to ensure that the theories that we work on have actual real world, not only significance, but can be utilized in the real world for solving actual problems,\u201d Ahmad said.<\/span><\/p>\nFor both Ahmad and Sabouni, safety\u00a0<\/span>is the common theme in each of their respective research. Ahmad emphasized its critical role in autonomous and artificial intelligence systems.<\/span><\/p>\nWhile both PhD students said they are grateful for the award and recognition, they also said seeing their lab experiments and simulations on hardware and physical systems was enough.<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cI would like to call these types of awards a cherry on top,\u201d Sabouni said. \u201cBecause you already got what you wanted by seeing the fruit of your work, and that it actually matters and is meaningful in the real world.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nAs for the future of their work, Ahmad and Sabouni said there is always space to grow and to improve their work in the lab so they can see it deployed on the street.<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cReceiving the award also confirms that the work we are doing is indeed relevant and has practical usefulness in the domain that we work in,\u201d Ahmad said. \u201cIt also motivates us further to work towards this direction, which is very closely related to both of our PhD research.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sabouni and Ahmad collaborated and won the TC Outstanding Student Paper Prize.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22818,"featured_media":161314,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[236,257,239,910],"tags":[512,273,302,259,352,322],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161313"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22818"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=161313"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161313\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":170797,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161313\/revisions\/170797"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/161314"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=161313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=161313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=161313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"CSS_SC_Award](\"\/eng\/files\/2025\/03\/CSS_SC_Award-477x636.jpg\")