C.W. de Silva

About

C.W. de Silva is a distinguished robotics and intelligent systems researcher whose work spans multi-robot cooperation, machine learning-based control, and robotic manipulation. He is perhaps best known for his pioneering contributions to cooperative multi-robot transportation, where his development of the Sequential Q-Learning with Kalman Filtering (SQKF) algorithm — his most cited work with 38 citations — demonstrated how distributed reinforcement learning could enable autonomous robots to collaboratively navigate unknown, dynamic environments with greater efficiency and adaptability. This line of research, further explored through several complementary studies on multi-agent architectures and extended Q-learning frameworks, helped lay important groundwork for scalable multi-robot systems. Beyond machine learning, de Silva has made notable contributions to real-time open-architecture control systems for industrial robots, robotic gripper design, and applied computer vision, including statistical pattern recognition for automated fish processing — reflecting a broad commitment to translating robotic research into practical industrial settings. His more recent work on oculomotor sensing using OpenBCI signals an expanding interest in human-computer and human-robot interaction. Complementing his experimental contributions, his theoretical work on fuzzy logic and decoupled rule bases acknowledges the intellectual lineage of foundational figures like Zadeh and MacFarlane, underscoring de Silva's engagement with both the theory and real-world application of intelligent control systems.

Research Focus

Key Achievements

Top Papers

1. 1
   Sequential $Q$-Learning With Kalman Filtering for Multirobot Cooperative Transportation

   38 citations · 2009
2. 2
   Development and implementation of a real-time open-architecture control system for industrial robot systems

   35 citations · 2004
3. 3
   An object transportation system with multiple robots and machine learning

   16 citations · 2005
4. 4
   Cooperative Transportation by Multiple Robots with Machine Learning

   13 citations · 2006
5. 5
   An innovative robotic gripper for grasping and handling research

   9 citations · 2002
6. 6
   Extend Single-agent Reinforcement Learning Approach to a Multi-robot Cooperative Task in an Unknown Dynamic Environment

   7 citations · 2006
7. 7
   Zadeh–MacFarlane–Jamshidi theorems on decoupling of a fuzzy rule base

   6 citations · 2011
8. 8
   An Oculomotor Sensing Technique for Saccade Isolation of Eye Movements using OpenBCI

   6 citations · 2019
9. 9
   Statistical pattern recognition for cutter positioning in automated fish processing

   6 citations · 2002
10. 10
    On-line sensing and modeling of mechanical impedance in robotic food processing

    3 citations · 2002

Key Collaborators

Contact & Links