Autonomous Vehicles & Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (AVAILab)

Multidisciplinary laboratory focused on developments and applications within the fields of Mathematical Modelling, Optimisation, Soft & Natural Computing, Self-Organisation & Swarm Robotics, Autonomous Navigation, Computer Vision, and Positioning Systems.

Selected Publications

Below are selected publications since the AVAILAB’s foundation in 2016.
The full list of publications by Dr Mauro S. Innocente is available here.

Journal Papers

Under Review

  1. M. Tavakol Sadrabadi, & M.S. Innocente (2025). Stochastic near-surface wind field estimation from sparse aerial swarm measurements over wildland fires. Under Review in Applied Soft Computing, Elsevier.
    DOI: TBC
  2. J.J. Tai, J.K. Terry, M.S. Innocente, J. Brusey, & N. Horri (2022). Some Supervision Required: Incorporating Oracle Policies in Reinforcement Learning via Epistemic Uncertainty Metrics. Upcoming submission to Artificial Intelligence, Elsevier.
    DOI: 10.48550/arXiv.2208.10533.
  3. J.J. Tai, J. Wong, M.S. Innocente, N. Horri, J. Brusey, & S.K. Phang (2023). PyFlyt—UAV Simulation Environments for Reinforcement Learning Research. Upcoming submission to Journal of Field Robotics, Wiley.
    DOI: 10.48550/arXiv.2304.01305.

Published

  1. M. Tavakol Sadrabadi, J. Peiró, M.S. Innocente, & G. Rein (2025). Conceptual design of a wildfire emergency response system empowered by swarms of unmanned aerial vehicles. International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, 124, 105493, Elsevier.
    DOI: 10.1016/j.ijdrr.2025.105493.
  2. M. Tavakol Sadrabadi, & M.S. Innocente (2025). To cut or not to cut: Effect of vegetation height and bulk density on wildfire propagation under varying wind and slope conditions. International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, 121, 105372, Elsevier.
    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijdrr.2025.105372
  3. I. Papagiannis, M.S. Innocente, J.D. Davies, J.L. Ryan, & E.I. Gkanas (2024). Investigating the impact of Iron Oxide Nanoparticles on the stability of Class A foam for wildfire suppression. Fire Safety Journal, 150, Part A, Elsevier.
    DOI: 10.1016/j.firesaf.2024.104282.
  4. M. Tavakol Sadrabadi, & M.S. Innocente (2024). Enhancing Wildfire Propagation Model Predictions Using Aerial Swarm-Based Real-Time Wind Measurements: A Conceptual Framework. Applied Mathematical Modelling, 130, 615–634, Elsevier.
    DOI: 10.1016/j.apm.2024.03.012.
  5. M. Tavakol Sadrabadi, & M.S. Innocente (2023). Vegetation Cover Type Classification Using Cartographic Data for Prediction of Wildfire Behaviour. Fire, 6, no. 2: 76, MDPI.
    DOI: 10.3390/fire6020076.
  6. Z. Zyadat, N. Horri, M.S. Innocente, & T. Statheros (2023). Observer-Based Optimal Control of a Quadplane with Active Wind Disturbance and Actuator Fault Rejection. Sensors 23, no. 4: 1954, MDPI.
    DOI: 10.3390/s23041954.
  7. P. Grasso, M.S. Innocente, J.J. Tai, O. Haas, & A.M. Dizqah (2022). Analysis and Accuracy Improvement of UWB-TDoA-Based Indoor Positioning System. Sensors, 22, no. 23: 9136, MDPI.
    DOI: 10.3390/s22239136.
  8. D. Rajput, J.M. Herreros, M.S. Innocente, J. Bryans, J. Schaub, & A.M. Dizqah (2022). Impact of the Number of Planetary Gears on the Energy Efficiency of Electrified Powertrains. Applied Energy, 323, 119531, Elsevier.
    DOI: 10.1016/j.apenergy.2022.119531.
  9. D. Rajput, J.M. Herreros, M.S. Innocente, J. Schaub, & A.M. Dizqah (2021). Electrified Powertrain with Multiple Planetary Gears and Corresponding Energy Management Strategy. Vehicles, 3, 341–356, MDPI.
    DOI: 10.3390/vehicles3030021
  10. P. Grasso, & M.S. Innocente (2020). Physics-based model of wildfire propagation towards faster-than-real-time simulations. Computers and Mathematics with Applications, 80, 790–808, Elsevier.
    DOI: 10.1016/j.camwa.2020.05.009
  11. A.M. Dizqah, B.L. Ballard, M.V. Blundell, S. Kanarachos, & M.S. Innocente (2020). A Non-Convex Control Allocation Strategy as Energy-Efficient Torque Distributors for On-Road and Off-Road Vehicles. Control Engineering Practice, 95, Elsevier.
    DOI: 10.1016/j.conengprac.2019.104256
  12. M.S. Innocente, & P. Grasso (2019). Self-organising swarms of firefighting drones: Harnessing the power of collective intelligence in decentralised multi-robot systems. Journal of Computational Science, 34, 80–101, Elsevier.
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jocs.2019.04.009

Book Chapters

  1. M.P.G. Sirimanna, J.D. Nixon, and M.S. Innocente (2023). Performance of different optimization solvers for designing solar linear fresnel reflector power generation systems. In: Nixon, J.D., Al-Habaibeh, A., Vukovic, V., Asthana, A. (eds) Energy and Sustainable Futures: Proceedings of the 3rd ICESF, 2022. ICESF 2022. Springer Proceedings in Energy. Springer, Cham.
    DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-30960-1_30
  2. M. Tavakol Sadrabadi, M.S. Innocente, E.I. Gkanas, & I. Papagiannis (2022). Comparison of the effect of one-way and two-way fire-wind coupling on the modelling of wildland fire propagation dynamics. In: Viegas, D.X., Ribeiro, L.M. (eds.) Advances in Forest Fire Research 2022 (115–121). Imprensa da Universidade de Coimbra.
    DOI: 10.14195/978-989-26-2298-9_18.
  3. P. Grasso, & M.S. Innocente (2022). Stigmergy-based collision-avoidance algorithm for autonomous firefighting drone swarms. In: Smys, S., Tavares, J.M.R.S., Balas, V.E. (eds) Computational Vision and Bio-Inspired Computing. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, vol 1420. Springer, Singapore.
    DOI: 10.1007/978-981-16-9573-5_19
  4. J.J. Tai, M.S. Innocente, & O. Mehmood (2022). FasteNet: A Fast Railway Fastener Detector. In: Yang XS., Sherratt S., Dey N., Joshi A. (eds) Proceedings of Sixth International Congress on Information and Communication Technology. Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems, vol 235. Springer, Singapore.
    DOI: 10.1007/978-981-16-2377-6_71.
  5. I. Papagiannis, M.S. Innocente, & E.I. Gkanas (2022). Synthesis and Characterisation of Iron Oxide Nanoparticles with Tunable Sizes by Hydrothermal Method. In Materials Science Forum, 1053, 176–181, Trans Tech Publications Ltd.
    DOI: 10.4028/p-0so8ha
  6. M.S. Innocente (2021). Particle Swarms Reformulated towards a Unified and Flexible Framework. In: Tan Y., Shi Y. (eds.) Advances in Swarm Intelligence. ICSI 2021. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 12689. Springer, Cham.
    DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-78743-1_25
  7. P. Grasso, & M.S. Innocente (2018). A two-dimensional reaction-advection-diffusion model of the spread of fire in wildlands. In Advances in Forest Fire Research 2018 (pp. 334–342). Imprensa da Universidade de Coimbra.
    DOI: 10.14195/978-989-26-16-506_36

Conference Papers

  1. P. Grasso, & M.S. Innocente (2020). Debiasing of position estimations of UWB-based TDoA indoor positioning system. In Proceedings of the 2020 UK-RAS Conference: ‘Robots into the Real World’, Lincoln, UK (virtual), 2020.
    DOI: 10.31256/Ua2Vp3X
  2. P. Grasso, & M.S. Innocente (2020). Theoretical study of signal and geometrical properties of two-dimensional UWB-based indoor positioning systems using TDoA. In Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Mechatronics and Robotics Engineering, Barcelona, Spain, 2020.
    DOI: 10.1109/ICMRE49073.2020.9065121
  3. M.S. Innocente, & P. Grasso (2018). Swarm of autonomous drones self-organised to fight the spread of wildfires. In Proceedings of the GEOSAFE Workshop on Robust Solutions for Fire Fighting (Vol. 2146), L’Aquila, Italy, 2018. CEUR.
  4. M.S. Innocente, & P. Grasso (2018). Proof-of-Concept Swarm of Self-Organising Drones Aimed at Fighting Wildfires. In Proceedings of the 2017 UK-RAS Conference: ‘Robots Working for and among Us’, pp. 102–105, Bristol, UK, 2017.

Conference Posters

  1. D. Rajput, A.M. Dizqah, J.M. Herreros, & M.S. Innocente (2020). Effect of number of planetary gears on fuel consumption and vehicle performance in the hybrid powertrain of a passenger car. Poster session presented at the Future Powertrain Conference, Birmingham, UK.
  2. M.S. Innocente, & D.J. Rogers (2017). Thermal Modelling and Design Optimisation of DC-DC Converters. Poster session presented at EPSRC Centre for Power Electronics Annual Conference, Loughborough, UK.