Chen Maximizes Ohio State Experience by Exploring his Passion for Problem-Solving and Peer Mentorship

Posted: 
Bo-Shian Chen
Chen on one of his many adventures, DuSable Bridge, Chicago, IL

Mechanical Engineering graduate student Bo-Shian Chen shares how he is maximizing his Ohio State University experience as a research assistant at the SIMCenter and Center for Automotive Research (CAR) and by serving as president of the Taiwanese Student Association (TWSA). Chen's love of science and curiosity for solving complex problems led him to the Buckeye engineering family.     

Hometown: Kaohsiung City, Taiwan

What topics in your area of study interest you most?
I found that "reinforcement learning" catches my interest the most. Not only because many fascinating algorithms help train and optimally solve engineering problems, but also implies a great life philosophy. That is, our life is a continuous task, we need to keep exploring the surroundings, exploiting our knowledge and, learning from our mistakes to reach our life or short-term goal while collecting as many rewards as possible.

What has been your favorite class?
My favorite class is ME8322 Vehicle System Dynamics and Control. This class has not only taught me the concept and knowledge of advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) but also gave me a chance to implement them with my own designed controller to see how it performed.

Describe your research project.
Testing the new safety technology features of autonomous vehicles requires simulation-based validation & verification and critical scenarios to reveal the reliability of the controller. The goal of our project is to obtain a clear, unbiased definition of criticality metrics that can identify the criticality of scenarios. The project contains three key phases:
1) Developed scenarios under several highway situations based on the real crash data.
2) Developed an optimal control-based strategy to generate safety-critical simulation scenarios for autonomous vehicle obstacle avoidance maneuvers.
3)  Extended the approach further to incorporate modeling uncertainties by computing crash probabilities.
The higher-level goals can be reached by integrating more information in the vehicle dynamics model, such as finer discretization steps and system states, for higher fidelity. The innovation of this approach is that it consists of a calibration-free best possible controller and incorporates uncertainties in the system model. This improves the robustness of results and eliminates any dependencies of criticality definitions on the specific controller or driver model.

What was your best or worse childhood experiment?
I can share one of my worst experiments, and it's probably the most dangerous one. When I was a boy, I was trying to understand how strong my home electric system is and how many electronics it can supply at once. With my limited knowledge, I started with small watt machines such as lamps, fans, etc. Then went higher like a stove, microwave, heater, A/C, etc. In the beginning, things looked just fine. A few seconds later, some sparks and smoke started coming out from the socket, then suddenly everything went down and our house became completely dark. Some fuses might be gone and since it was already night, my parents had to call someone to fix them. I got a harsh penalty and I got lucky that I didn't burn the whole house down. After that, I learned the importance of using a multimeter and choosing the right platform to do the electrical experiment.

What do you enjoy most about participating in the Taiwanese Student Association?
I can say hosting the welcome party is my favorite part. Every year around May, we have a welcome party for the new Taiwanese students. As a leader, it’s my honor to introduce the campus life at Ohio State and share my experiences and some life advice with these new Buckeyes. We also have a Q&A session to make sure these freshmen are well-prepared. 

What is your favorite place on campus?
W. 18th Avenue because the road there is very smooth and good for skateboarding.

What are your hobbies?
I like traveling, skateboarding, badminton, and tennis.

What has been your favorite travel spot?
I’ve been to most of East Asia before I came to the US. I would say the “Historic City of Ayutthaya” in Thailand is my favorite spot. The great geographical location and well-designed city planning grid made it one of the capitals of the Siamese Kingdom, flourished from the 14th to the 18th centuries, and was raised by the Burmese army in 1767. The city was never rebuilt in the same place and therefore, I could feel the strength of the ancient dynasty and the grief of the inhabitants that were forced to abandon their homes. The astonishing view and profound historic background make this my favorite spot.

What are your plans after graduation?
I would like to work as an automotive technology simulation engineer in automotive companies.


Connect with Bo-Shian here: Bo-Shian Chen LinkedIn
Learn more about the Taiwanese Student Association, here: OSU TWSA Facebook

Written by Camille Weiker-Isaman, SIMCenter 

Categories: StudentsResearch