Dr. Chong Xu
Full-Time Faculty, Fellow
University of St. Thomas
Dr. Chong Xu (Senior Member IEEE) has broad-spectrum research experiences and interests in various fields. She developed various heuristic optimization algorithms to solve NP-hard multi-user detection problems in all kinds of state-of-the-art wireless communication systems during her Ph.D. studies in University of Southampton. In 2010, she joined Information Technology Laboratory at National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Department of Commerce, Gaithersburg, MD, USA as a research fellow. Her research at NIST includes developing scheduling/routing and detection algorithms for Smart Grid and MIMO wireless communication systems. Since September 2012, Dr. Xu has been employed as a faculty member of School of Engineering at University of St. Thomas (UST) in St. Paul, Minnesota, USA. Her research work at UST includes developing novel algorithms for large-scale optimization problems in different application areas such as FPGA cell assignment problems, automatic bubble detection for fluid pressure measurement, etc. She has also been leading a research group to develop and implement novel localization and navigation algorithms for autonomous vehicles used for precision agriculture. Dr. Chong Xu is also interested in machine learning algorithms and internet-of-things (IoT). She has published more than 20 papers on peer reviewed IEEE and ASME journals and proceedings.
Peter Farley is an Embedded Software Engineer at Sensata Technologies, where he develops low-power cellular- and GNSS-based asset monitoring devices. While studying at the University of St. Thomas for a B.S. in Computer Engineering, he began working with Dr. Xu on research in the field of Precision Agriculture, where he developed the embedded guidance and control software for a proof-of-concept agriculture rover. Additional areas of interest include operating system design, communication protocols, and embedded systems security.
Peter Farley
Founder of the System
University of St. Thomas Alumnus
Sensata Technologies
Samuel J. LeVoir received a B.S. degree in computer engineering from the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota USA in 2019. During his time at St. Thomas, his research focused on computer vision algorithms and machine learning techniques. These studies were applied to the project written about in this paper of navigating a rover through a crop field as well as a laser scanning system which
created 3D models of braille documents. He also researched the development of efficient power usage algorithms in low voltage applications with a focus on dynamic voltage and frequency scaling. After graduating from St. Thomas, he has been employed at Open Systems International (OSI) as a software developer, writing code to help maintain the power grid.
Samuel J. Levoir
Developer, UST Alumnus
While attending the University of St. Thomas as a Computer Engineering major Kyle worked with Dr. Xu on the Ag-Bot Precision Agriculture rover, specifically in testing and debugging the autonomous path-following control algorithm. Since graduating from St. Thomas Kyle has been working at the Toro Company Robotics branch in Longmont, CO as an automation engineer, where he works on the obstacle detection subsystem for autonomous lawn mowers. His main interests include autonomous navigation, computer vision and perception, 3D printing, and embedded Linux software development.