Grupo de Sistemas Autônomos Inteligentes

GSAI conducts research in artificial intelligence for autonomous systems, with emphasis on vehicles and robots, and on physics-informed neural networks for control (PINC). The group connects perception, imitation learning, generative models, control, and physical knowledge in real-world problems.

Where UFSC · Florianópolis Department of Automation and Systems Engineering (EAS), Federal University of Santa Catarina.

Research pillars

Autonomous systems

Research on intelligent vehicles and robots, especially policy learning for navigation in complex environments.

  • Autonomous driving in simulated and real-world-inspired environments
  • Imitation learning, GAIL, EBMs, and diffusion models
  • Bird’s-Eye View representations and mid-level perception
  • Robust policy generalization under multimodal behaviors

PINC and physics-informed control

Development of models that incorporate physical laws into learning for simulation and control.

  • Physics-informed neural networks for ODE/PDE-governed systems
  • Control of nonlinear and controllable dynamical systems
  • Physics-informed recurrent and reservoir-based models
  • Bridging data efficiency, prior knowledge, and control performance

News

Members

Selected publications

See full list (with PDFs) →

Collaboration

Research videos & demos

Alumni

  • Leonardo Pezenatto da Silva Master — VISERCM: Vision-based Inertial Signal Estimation and Road Condition Monitoring (2026)
  • Bruno Maciel Machado Master — Diffusion Models for Offline Behavior Cloning in Autonomous Driving Scenarios (2025)
  • Willian Benoski Master — Implicit Behavioral Cloning for Multimodal Behavior Learning in Autonomous Driving (2025)
  • Gustavo Claudio Karl Couto Master — Generative Adversarial Imitation Learning with Bird’s-Eye View Input Generation for Autonomous Driving on Urban Environments (2023)
  • Irving Giovani Master — Imitation Learning for Autonomous Driving: Disagreement-Regularization and Behavior Cloning with Beta Distribution (2023)
  • Eric Mochiutti Master — Physics-Informed Echo State Networks for Modeling Controllable Dynamical Systems (2023)
  • Rafael de Souza Toledo Master — Semantic Segmentation of Low-Resolution Images from Damaged Roads (2022)

Funding & institutional support

Apoio · Funding support

CNPq — research projects and scholarships. CAPES — graduate scholarships (MSc/PhD). FAPESC — PhD scholarship.

Host institution

Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC), Florianópolis, Brazil.

Contact

Eric Aislan Antonelo

Department of Automation and Systems Engineering (EAS), Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC), Florianópolis, Brazil.

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