Fourth-year Electronics Engineering students Charles Sosmeña and Philip Joaquin Basa emerged as champions in Lear’s 8th Innovation Olympics on September 12, 2024, at Lear’s Philippine Engineering Technological Center, MEPZ 2, Lapu-Lapu City. 

The USC contingent’s groundbreaking research highlights the adaptive control of an inverted pendulum system using reinforcement learning employing the Twin Delayed Deep Deterministic Policy Gradient (TD3) algorithm with innovations including Fork (TD3-Fork) and Layer Normalization (LN). 

The project successfully demonstrated the system’s ability to stabilize amidst external disturbances and parameter variations, contributing valuable insights to the field of nonlinear adaptive control systems. 

Associate Professor Engr. Joseph Karl G. Salva, who heads the Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering Special Applications Laboratory, is the team’s mentor. As champions, the Carolinian team went home with a trophy and a $2,500 cash prize. 

With reporting from Dr. Edward M. Querikiol, Chair of the Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering