Talk #1
Wang Danwei
IEEE Life Fellow
School of Electrical and Electronics Engineering
Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
Title: Enabling Autonomy with Robust Perception and Remote Intervention
Abstract: Autonomy technologies have advanced enormously in the past few decades. However, it has yet to be effectively deployed in wide-range of industrial and outdoor environments. Some outstanding key challenges include adverse outdoor environments and unstructured corner cases. Without properly resolving these issues, autonomy will not be able to meet the requirement for industry deployments. This talk discusses some relevant achievements: multi-modal perception for outdoor adverse conditions and remote intervention for unstructured corner cases. Robust perception capability enables the decision making and execution at various levels and loops of a complex intelligent autonomous systems. Some achievements are presented using multi-modal sensing and perception for reliable and robust outdoor scenarios. Successful remote intervention will be shown an effective way in dealing with unstructured corner cases and enabling autonomy with reduction of manpower requirement.
Biography:
WANG Danwei is Life Fellow of IEEE, Fellow, Academy of Engineering Singapore, Fellow, AvH (Germany) and recipient of the First-Class Award of Shanghai Science and Technology. He received his Ph.D degree from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA. Currently, he is professor, School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, NTU, He is Editor, IEEE IROS (International Conference on Intelligent Robotics and Systems) since 2019. He has published 6 books, 7 book chapters, 9 patents and over 500 technical papers and articles in international refereed journals and conferences. SCI citations to his papers amount 8800+ as of Feb 2023 and Google Scholar citations are well over 17,000. He also set up a spin-off company to commercialise his research results in the area of sensing systems and autonomous systems.
Talk #2
Juan Jose Rodriguez-Andina
IEEE Fellow, Professor
Department of Electronic Technology, University of Vigo, Spain
Title: Embedded Systems for IoT and Edge Computing. Architectures and Applications
Abstract: Embedded systems play a fundamental role for the deployment of IoT / edge computing solutions. The ever-growing number of application domains where these solutions can be advantageously used ranges from personal sports gadgets to complex industrial systems. This variety of domains comes with very diverse data management and computation requirements for embedded systems, from basic processing solutions to complex artificial intelligence-based ones. Generally speaking, “low” power consumption, complexity, size, and cost have to be combined with “powerful” measurement, processing, and communication capabilities. But what “low” and “powerful” mean is strongly application-dependent, so the choice of the embedded device to be used must be carefully considered. This presentation will first briefly introduce current embedded hardware architectures, including heterogeneous devices, emphasizing their main characteristics. The second part of the talk will describe real solutions where different architectures are used, showing their practical usefulness depending on the specific application.
Biography:
Juan Jose Rodriguez-Andina (Fellow, IEEE) received the M.Sc. degree from the Technical University of Madrid, Spain, in 1990, and the Ph.D. degree from University of Vigo, Spain, in 1996, both in electrical engineering. He is a professor with the Department of Electronic Technology, University of Vigo. In 2010-2011 he was on sabbatical leave as a Visiting Professor at the ADAC Laboratory, North Carolina State University, Raleigh. His current research interests include the implementation of complex control and processing algorithms and intelligent sensors in embedded platforms.
Prof. Rodriguez-Andina has authored over 180 journal and conference articles, and holds several Spanish, European, and US patents. He is co-author of the articles that received the 2023 IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics Outstanding Paper Award and the 2017 IEEE Industrial Electronics Magazine Best Paper Award.
He received the 2020 Anthony Hornfeck Award from the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society (IES). He is the 2024-2025 IES President-Elect. From 2016 to 2021 he was IES Vice President for Conference Activities.
He served as Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Industrial Electronics Magazine (2013-2015) and as Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics (2008-2018). He is currently serving as Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics and the IEEE Open Journal of the Industrial Electronics Society. From January 2024, he will serve as Co-Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics.
Talk #3
Armando Walter Colombo
IEEE Fellow, Professor
Institute for Industrial Informatics,
Automation and Robotics (i2AR),
University of Applied Sciences Emden/Leer, Germany
Title: Industry 4.0-compliant Digitalization Process for Supporting a Circular Economy
Abstract: Industry 4.0-compliant digitalized systems built their structure and their functions based on CPS. They forge the core of real-world networked industrial infrastructures having a cyber-representation through digitalization of data and information across the enterprise, along the product and process engineering life-cycle and from suppliers to customers along the supply chain following the value-stream. As such the competitive performance of an ICPS mainly depends on the ability to effectively collect, analyze and use large-scale digitalized data and information, in real-time, from many different and often heterogeneous sources, to sustainably and efficiently manage, supervise and operate in the industrial environments. This effective information-driven interaction of ICPS with other CPS and enterprise systems, extending to all business processes, is viewed as vital to modern industries, supporting the real implementation of a Circular Economy.
In this context, the Plenary Talk (i) addresses the penetration and proliferation of Industry 4.0-compliant ecosystems into the industrial environments under the perspective of a Circular Economy framework, taking into account that the same trend is also evident in other domains such as energy, healthcare, manufacturing, military, transportation, consumer, enterprise, robotics, and smart cities, among others; and (ii) offers an overview of major requirements for supporting the industrial digitalization engineering of processes and systems, showing examples of ongoing innovation projects and deployed solutions.
Biography:
Prof. Dr.-Ing. Armando Walter Colombo (Fellow IEEE) joined the Department of Electrotechnical and Industrial Informatics at the University of Applied Sciences Emden-Leer, Germany, became Full Professor in August 2010 and Director of the Institute for Industrial Informatics, Automation and Robotics (I2AR) in 2012. He worked during the last 17 years as Manager for Collaborative Projects and also as Edison Level 2 Group Senior Expert at Schneider Electric, Industrial Business Unit. His research interests are in the fields of industrial cyber-physical systems, industrial digitalization and system-of-systems engineering, Internetof-Services, Industry 4.0-compliant solutions. Prof. Colombo has over 30 industrial patents and more than 300 per-review publications (see https://scholar.google.fi/citations?user=FgFDTMEAAAAJ&hl=en). He has extensive experience in managing multi-cultural research teams in multi-regional projects and has participated in leading positions in many international research and innovation projects. With his contributions, he has performed scientific and technical seminal contributions that are nowadays being used as one of the bases of what is recognized as “The 4th Industrial Revolution”: networked collaborative smart cyber-physical systems that are penetrating the daily life, producing visible societal changes and impacting all levels of the society. He is currently Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Open Access Journal of the IES (OJIES), Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Systems Council, and member of the IEEE IES Administrative Committee (AdCom). Prof. Colombo is listed in Who’s Who in the World /Engineering 9900/01 and in Outstanding People of the XX Century (Bibliographic Centre Cambridge, UK).
Talk #4
Youmin Zhang
IEEE Fellow, Professor
Department of Mechanical, Industrial & Aerospace Engineering & Concordia Institute of Aerospace Design and Innovation (CIADI),
Concordia University, Canada
Title: Making Smarter, Safer, More Reliable and More Resilient Cyber-Physical Systems with Applications to Unmanned Systems and Smart Grids
Abstract: Although the concepts and developments on Fault Detection and Diagnosis (FDD) and Fault-Tolerant Control (FTC) have been progressively and extensively investigated worldwide since the 1970s and 1980s, respectively, the recent catastrophic crashes of two Boeing 737 MAX8 airplanes in 2019 have again highlighted the necessity and urgency for FDD and FTC research & development and their industrial applications. On the other hand, Smart Grids (SGs, including wind, solar, hydro, and hydrogen energies etc.) and Unmanned Systems (USs, including Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGVs), Autonomous/Driverless Vehicles (AVs), Unmanned Surface Vehicles (USVs), and Unmanned Underwater Vehicles (UUVs), etc.) are gaining more and more attention and rapid development during the last few years due to their relatively easy and cost-effective uses in various application tasks directly linking to our daily life for cleaner energy, better mobility, and sustainable development while fighting with climate change and global warming issues. These new advancements are benefited significantly from new technical advances in materials, electronics, electrification, communication, computation, control, actuators, sensors, networks and new/smart designs linked to the rapid development under the framework of Cyber-Physical Systems (CPSs) and widely spread Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Deep Neural Network (DNN) learning technologies. Due to a higher level of size and complexity in systems, in particular the added technical challenges due to the involvement of more electronic devices with both hardware and software and with large-scale and distributed networked systems, artificial cyber-attacks through communication networks, along with physical faults, could occur during systems operation, which will all lead to physical damages of the system and thus critical issues on stability, performance, safety, and security of the desired/planned operations of the above-mentioned Smart Grids and Unmanned Systems. In this talk, brief overall view on the challenges and latest developments towards smarter, safer, more reliable and more resilient autonomous/unmanned systems and renewable energy systems in terms of safe and secure controls of SGs with integration of renewable energies and USs integrating with Remote Sensing (RS) techniques for applications to forest and environment monitoring and fires/damages/risks detection will be presented first, then some of new developments and current research works being carried out at our group will be introduced as the second part of the presentation. In particular, new developments on autonomous control, FDD, FTC, and Fault/Attack-Tolerant Cooperative Control (FTCC) techniques towards autonomous, safe and secure operations and applications of autonomous SGs and USs towards the forest fire and smart cities monitoring and detection tasks in the presence of physical-faults/damages and cyber-attacks will be presented.
Biography:
Dr. Youmin Zhang (IEEE Fellow) is currently a Professor at the Department of Mechanical, Industrial and Aerospace Engineering and the Concordia Institute of Aerospace Design and Innovation (CIADI) at Concordia University, Canada. Dr. Zhang received his B.Sc., M.Sc., and Ph.D. degrees in Automatic Control Department of Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an, China, in 1983, 1986, and 1995, respectively. His main research interests and experience are in the areas of condition monitoring, health management, fault/attack detection and diagnosis, and fault-tolerant and cyber-resilient control; autonomous guidance, navigation and control of unmanned aerial/space/ground/marine vehicles with applications to forest fires monitoring, detection, and protection by combining with remote sensing techniques; advanced signal processing techniques for diagnosis, prognosis, fault-tolerant and health management of safety-critical systems with application to renewable energy systems and smart grids, and smart cities under the framework of cyber-physical systems. He has published 10 books, over 600 journal and conference papers, and book chapters with high citations. Dr. Zhang is a Fellow of IEEE and Canadian Society of Mechanical Engineering (CSME), the President of International Society of Intelligent Unmanned Systems (ISIUS) during 2019-2022, Executive Committee Member of International Conference on Unmanned Aircraft Systems (ICUAS), Steering Committee Member of International Symposium on Autonomous Systems (ISAS), and a member of the Technical Committee for several international and national scientific societies. He has been an Editor-in-Chief, an Editorial Board Member, and Associate Editor of several international journals, including as an Associate Editor of “IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics”, “IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks & Learning Systems”, “IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems – II: Express Briefs”, “Unmanned Systems”, “Drone Systems and Applications”, “Security and Safety”, a Deputy Editor-in-Chief for “Guidance, Navigation and Control” etc. He has served as (Honorary) General Chair, Program Chair of several robotics, autonomous/unmanned systems, renewable energies, and smart cities relevant international conferences. More detailed information can be found at http://users.encs.concordia.ca/~ymzhang/.
Talk #5
Qing-Long Han
IEEE Fellow, Distinguished Professor
Pro Vice-Chancellor (Research Quality),
Swinburne University of Technology, Australia
Title: Dynamic Event-Triggered Distributed Coordination Control
Abstract: Distributed coordination control is the current trend in networked systems and finds prosperous applications across a variety of fields, such as smart grids and intelligent transportation systems. One fundamental issue in coordinating and controlling a large group of distributed and networked agents is the influence of intermittent inter-agent interactions caused by constrained communication resources. Event-triggered communication scheduling stands out as a promising enabler to strike a balance between the desired control performance and the satisfactory resource efficiency. What distinguishes dynamic event-triggered scheduling from traditional static event-triggered scheduling is that the triggering mechanism can be dynamically adjusted over time in accordance with both available system information and additional dynamic variables. This talk provides an up-to-date overview of dynamic event-triggered distributed coordination control. The motivation of dynamic event-triggered scheduling is first introduced in the context of distributed coordination control. Then some techniques of dynamic event-triggered distributed coordination control are discussed in detail. Implementation and design issues are well addressed. Furthermore, this talk exemplifies two applications of dynamic event-triggered distributed coordination control in the fields of microgrids and automated vehicles. Several challenges are suggested to direct future research.
Biography:
Professor Han is Pro Vice-Chancellor (Research Quality) and a Distinguished Professor at Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia. He held various academic and management positions at Griffith University and Central Queensland University, Australia. He received the Ph.D. degree in Control Engineering from East China University of Science and Technology in 1997.
Professor Han was awarded The 2021 Norbert Wiener Award (the Highest Award in systems science and engineering, and cybernetics), The 2021 M. A. Sargent Medal (the Highest Award of the Electrical College Board of Engineers Australia), The IEEE Systems, Man, and Cybernetics Society Andrew P. Sage Best Transactions Paper Award in 2022, 2020, and 2019, respectively, The IEEE/CAA Journal of Automatica Sinica Norbert Wiener Review Award in 2021, and The IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics Outstanding Paper Award in 2020.
Professor Han is a Member of the Academia Europaea (The Academy of Europe) (MAE). He is a Fellow of The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (FIEEE), a Fellow of The International Federation of Automatic Control (FIFAC), an Honorary Fellow of The Institution of Engineers Australia (HonFIEAust), and a Fellow of The Chinese Association of Automation (FCAA). He is a Highly Cited Researcher in both Engineering and Computer Science (Clarivate). He has served as an AdCom Member of IEEE Industrial Electronics Society (IES), a Member of IEEE IES Fellows Committee, a Member of IEEE IES Publications Committee, and Chair of IEEE IES Technical Committee on Networked Control Systems. He is currently the Editor-in-Chief of IEEE/CAA Journal of Automatica Sinica, the Co-Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics, and the Co-Editor of Australian Journal of Electrical and Electronic Engineering.
Talk #6
KAMAL AL-HADDAD
IEEE Life Fellow, Professor
the Electrical Engineering Department,
École de Technologie Supérieure, Canada
Title: Design of power electronics converters considering the environmental impact
Abstract: The presentation will focus on the design of environmentally friendly power electronics converters taking into consideration the components technological characteristics. For many years environmental impact was considered as secondary and system operation was put first, new design must consider environmental impact at the early stage of product design. Reactive components such as bulky inductors and capacitors that were designed to comply with grid harmonics code should be reviews as to use filters less power electronics converter with high bandwidth and superior control performances using AI.
Biography:
KAMAL AL-HADDAD (Life Fellow, IEEE) received the B.Sc.A. and M.Sc.A. degrees from the University of Quebec à Trois-Rivières, Trois-Rivières, QC, Canada, in 1982 and 1984, respectively, and the Ph.D. degree from the Institute National Polytechnique, Toulouse, France, in 1988. Since June 1990, he has been a professor with the Electrical Engineering Department, École de Technologie Supérieure, Montreal, QC, Canada, where he has been the Senior Canada Research Chair of Electric Energy Conversion and Power Electronics since 2002. He is a consultant and has established a very solid link with many Canadian and international industries working in the field of power electronics, electric transportation, aeronautics, and telecommunications. He successfully transferred and implemented twenty-four technologies to Canadian and international companies. His research interests include highly efficient static power converters, harmonics and reactive power control using hybrid filters, voltage-level multiplier, resonant and multilevel converters including the modeling, control, and development of prototypes for various industrial applications in electric traction, renewable energy, sine wave power supplies for drives and telecommunication. Prof. Al-Haddad is a Member of the Academy of Sciences, Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and a Fellow Member of the Canadian Academy of Engineering. He was the IEEE IES President during 2016–2017. He is an Associate Editor for the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL INFORMATICS and IES Distinguished Lecturer. He was the recipient of the 2014 IEEE IES Dr.-Ing. Eugene Mittelmann Achievement Award. He is the IEEE 2023-2024 division VI director. Professor Al-Haddad is the recipient of the 2023 Medal in Power Engineering.
ONCON 2023 