Prospective Students

ENG KOR

Join SPARO Lab

SPARO Lab at Inha University focuses on building spatial AI for real-world robotics. Our goal is to enable robots to understand, navigate, and collaborate in complex and dynamic environments beyond controlled laboratory settings.

We are particularly interested in robust and scalable robot autonomy, where perception, mapping, and decision-making are tightly integrated under real-world constraints such as noise, uncertainty, and limited communication.

Our research spans from fundamental algorithms to real-world deployment, with a strong emphasis on field validation and system-level integration.

Research Areas

Spatial AI

Spatial Intelligence

  • Topometric and semantic mapping
  • Communication-efficient map representation
  • Distributed spatial intelligence

Global Localization

  • Place recognition across modalities
  • Robust localization in degraded environments
  • Collaborative mapping and localization

Robust Robot Perception

  • Multi-modal sensing including LiDAR, Radar, RGB, and Thermal
  • All-weather perception
  • Uncertainty-aware perception
  • Underwater and maritime vision

Robotics

SLAM and Multi-Robot Systems

  • Multi-session and multi-robot SLAM
  • Communication-aware coordination
  • Heterogeneous robot collaboration

Physical AI and Robot Learning

  • Learning-based navigation
  • Sim-to-real transfer
  • Traversability estimation
  • Perception-action coupling

Field Robotics

  • Maritime robotics
  • Autonomous delivery robots
  • Service robots in real environments
  • Large-scale deployment scenarios

Research Environment

SPARO Lab provides a strong experimental and collaborative environment, including an indoor home-like testbed with motion capture system, simulation environments such as Isaac Sim and MuJoCo, and various robotic platforms including mobile robots, legged robots, and service robots.

Students are encouraged to work on both theoretical research and real-world systems.

What We Expect

  • Strong interest in robotics and AI
  • Motivation to solve challenging real-world problems
  • Willingness to work on both theory and systems
  • Experience with, or willingness to learn, Python or C++
  • Experience with, or willingness to learn, ROS or ROS2
  • Basic background in machine learning, deep learning, or robotics

What You Will Gain

  • Hands-on experience with real robotic systems
  • Opportunities to publish in top-tier venues such as ICRA, IROS, and RA-L
  • Experience with large-scale research projects
  • Collaboration opportunities with industry and international research groups

Open Positions

  • M.S. students
  • Ph.D. students
  • Integrated M.S./Ph.D. students
  • Undergraduate interns

How to Apply

Please apply using the Google Form below.

Apply via Google Form

If you have questions, please contact the lab by email.  Email yg.cho at inha.ac.kr