Abstract : This presentation will focus on design, modularity, development and control of a highly interactive programmable surface created within the CISR. The system is comprised of thousands of pneumatic cylinders controlled simultaneously in real-time to create a highly dynamic and responsive 3 dimensional surface. The idea behind this research project was the creation of a dynamically responsive surface that configures in real-time according to input from a variety of electronic inputs (movements, sound, etc). The surface is also viewed potentially as a universal motional simulator platform. A simulator that was developed for ease of system reconfiguration demonstrates the translation of complex mathematical functions into 3D shapes in the virtual world before being generated on the real surface. Application areas span from optical telescope to product manufacturing and giant 3D screens billboards for advertising and artwork.

Biography: Saeid Nahavandi received his BSc (Hons), MSc and PhD in Control Engineering from Durham University, UK in 1985, 1986 and 1991 respectively. Saeid is an Alfred Deakin Professor and the Director for the Centre for Intelligent Systems Research at Deakin University in Australia. Professor Nahavandi is a Fellow member of IET, IEAust and Senior Member of IEEE and has published over 450 refereed papers and been awarded several competitive Australian Research Council (ARC) grants over the past five years. He received the Research collaboration / initiatives award from Japan (2000) and Prince & Princess of Wales Science Award in 1994. He won the title of Young Engineer of the Year Award in 1996 and holds two patents. In 2002 Professor Nahavandi served as a consultant to the Jet Propulsion Lab (NASA) during his visit to JPL Labs. In 2006 he received the title of Alfred Deakin Professor, the highest honour at Deakin University for his contribution to fundamental research. Professor Nahavandi is the founder of the Centre for Intelligent Systems Research with 60 full time researchers at Deakin University. In modelling and simulation of complex systems he has received awards from several organisations to focus on simulation based optimization of manufacturing processes, airport operations, logistics and distribution centres. He has carried out industry based research with several major international companies such as GM, Ford, Holden, Nissan, Bosch, Futuris, Boeing, Vestas just to name a few. Professor Nahavandi has been the Chairman of eight International conferences and the General Chair and Co-Chair for the World Manufacturing Congress series and the International Congress on Autonomous Intelligent Systems and IEEE SMC 2011. He is Co Editor-in-Chief for IEEE Systems Journal and Editorial Board Member for IEEE Access.

Abstract : Robots are expected to participate in and learn from intuitive, long term interaction with humans, and be safely deployed in myriad social applications ranging from elderly care, entertainment to education. They are also envisioned to collaborate and co-work with human beings in the foreseeable future for productivity, service, and operations with guaranteed quality. In this talk, I will present some of our recent works on control of robots in interacting with unknown environments. When human beings interact with an unknown environment, they have a skill to adjust their limb impedance to achieve a certain objective by evaluating the feedback information from the environment. It is possible to apply this learning skill to robot control. In specific, suppose that the robot dynamics follow an impedance model, its parameters can be adjusted such that a certain cost function is reduced iteratively. Besides impedance learning, trajectory adaptation is another human skill which can be realized by robot control. In a typical human-robot collaboration application, the robot under impedance control is guaranteed to be compliant to the force applied by the human partner. In this way, the robot passively follows the motion of its human partner. Nevertheless, as the robot refines its motion according to the interaction force, it will act as a load when the human partner intents to change the motion. Trajectory adaptation will be developed to resolve this problem such that zero force tracking can be achieved by updating the virtual desired trajectory of the robot.

Biography: Shuzhi Sam Ge is the founding Director of Social Robotics Lab, Interactive Digital Media Institute, and Professor of Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, the National University of Singapore; and Director of the Robotics Institute, and Professor of School of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, China. He received his BSc degree from Beijing University of Aeronautics & Astronautics in 1986, and PhD degree and DIC from the Imperial College, London in 1993. He has (co)-authored six books and over 300 international journal and conference papers. He has been playing a leading role in fundamental research in robotics, intelligent control and rehabilitation.

He serves/served as Vice President for Membership Activities, 2011-2012, Vice President of Technical Activities, 2009-2010, Member of Board of Governors, 2007-2009, and Chairman of the Technical Committee of Intelligent Control, 2005-2008, IEEE Control Systems Society (CSS). He serves as Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Social Robotics, Springer, and served/serves as an Associate Editor for a number of flagship journals including IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology, IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks, and Automatica, Book Editor for Taylor & Francis Automation and Control Engineering Series. He is a Fellow of IEEE, IFAC, IET and SAEng.

Abstract :The Electronic Systems Laboratory (ESL) is located within the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering of Stellenbosch University. It is arguably the most prominent aerospace control and dynamics laboratory on the African continent. The ESL was e.g. responsible for the creation of the continent’s first operational satellites: SUNSat and SumbandilaSat, both low-earth-orbit observation satellites. For the past two decades the laboratory has been home to more than 45 graduate students each year, serving clients such as Airbus, Armscor, the South African CSIR, the National Aerospace Center and many others. One of the major research drives in the laboratory is aimed towards the automation of Unmanned Aircraft (UA). The laboratory settled on a three-pronged approach towards improving the state of the art, namely: automation and control of aircraft dynamics; fault detection and isolation; and flight testing and regulatory studies. This plenary lecture serves as a whistle-stop tour of the successes of the ESL in terms of UA automation with a focus on the development of suitable theory and the practical implementation and testing of the developed solutions. As such, the lecture includes insights into the driving forces behind theoretical developments, as well as flight test results (including insightful video demonstrations). The lecture will illustrate how careful observation, detailed analysis and the application of advanced techniques may often lead us to relatively simple answers and quite general conclusions to very challenging problems.

Biography: After receiving his BEng and MScEng degrees in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from Stellenbosch University (SU) in South Africa (SA) Prof Jones started his aerospace career at Aerotek (a division of the CSIR at the time) and SU as a missile navigation and guidance system analyst. He relocated to the USA to join the CS Draper/MIT Technology Development Partnership Programme and was appointed as manager of this development programme whilst completing his PhD at MIT’s Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics. He has more than 15 years of experience designing and testing control systems for a large variety of challenging dynamic systems ranging from automated flight control for in-flight refuelling of Airbus tanker aircraft to pulse stabilisation of solid state lasers. His specialty lies in creating practical and innovative solutions to aerospace control challenges on helicopters, fixed-wing aircraft, missiles and just about any other vehicle that can fly. Prof Jones currently leads a team of 30 graduate students and academic staff specialising in aircraft and unmanned system automation at SU. He has forged strong research partnerships with many SA and international organisations, including Airbus (France, Germany and the UK), Armscor, Denel, the CSIR, the National Aerospace Centre, the National Test Pilot School (USA) and various universities around the globe. In 2008 he co-founded S-Plane Automation, a company successfully specialising in the development of high-end aircraft avionics and automation sub-systems serving the international market. Prof. Jones is inter alia a member of IFAC’s Technical Committee on Aerospace, an Associate-Editor of Control Engineering Practice and a member of the Executive Committee of the South African Council for Automatic Control (an IFAC NMO). He has served on SA Parliamentary Grant Review committees, review committees for the SA National Research Foundation, regulatory workgroups for the SA Civil Aviation Authority, organising committees for various academic conferences and serves as a member of the Advisory Board of the National Aerospace Center of the SA Department of Trade and Industry.

Abstract : High speed electric machines can achieve very high power output with very small size and weight compared to conventional designed machines. The high speed and high power density make them favorable in various applications. In this presentation, we discuss the finite element analysis (FEA) tools used in the design procedure to optimize the motor’s geometry and simulate its performance. Both magnetostatic and transient analysis are done to examine the performance of the machine. We also report the close loop control and drive system design which is challenging at super-high speed.

Biography: Prof. Thomas Wu received his Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania (Penn) in 1999. In the Fall of 1999, he joined the University of Central Florida (UCF) as an assistant professor. He was promoted to associate professor in 2005, and professor in 2011. He serves as the Director of the Center for Advanced Electric Machinery (CAEM) at UCF. He is also an associate editor of the IEEE Transactions on Industrial Applications. Prof. Wu was ASEE Summer Faculty Fellow at Air Force Research Lab (AFRL) in the Summer of 2009 and 2010. He was also appointed as the prestigious National Research Council (NRC) Senior Research Associate at AFRL from September 2010 to August 2012. Since joining UCF, he has been working on multi-physics modeling, optimization, design, fabrication and control of advanced electrical machines and complex electromagnetics devices, and has been PI or Co-PI for over 40 research projects. He has published over 75 journal and 150 conference papers, and has guided 16 PhD students to finish their PhD dissertations. His current research interests include high speed electric machines, multi-physics modeling and optimization, transportation electrification, high efficiency electric machines, variable frequency AC drives, SiC devices, voltage regulator module (VRM), etc.

Abstract : Power systems are going through a paradigm change from centralised generation, to distributed generation, and further on to smart grids. A huge number of renewable energy sources, electric vehicles, and storage systems etc. are being connected to power systems. Moreover, various loads are being required to take part in demand responses and to improve energy efficiency. These make it impossible to control and operate power systems in the conventional way, simply because of the huge number of players in the system. In this lecture, an architecture and its associated distributed control strategy, which are based on the inherent synchronisation mechanism of conventional synchronous generators, are presented for next-generation smart grids so that the majority of the players, including all conventional power plants, new add-ons of suppliers and most loads, will be able to synchronise with each other to achieve autonomous operation and maintain system stability, without the need of a dedicated communication network. The function of communication is achieved through control.

Biography: Qing-Chang Zhong is the Chair Professor in Control and Systems Engineering at the Department of Automatic Control and Systems Engineering, The University of Sheffield, UK. He is a Distinguished Lecturer of IEEE Power Electronics Society (2014-2015) and is invited to represent the UK at the European Control Association. In 2012-2013, he spent a six-month sabbatical at the Cymer Center for Control Systems and Dynamics (CCSD), University of California, San Diego, USA and an eight-month sabbatical at the Center for Power Electronics Systems (CPES), Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, USA. He received his PhD degree in control and power engineering (awarded the Best Doctoral Thesis Prize) from Imperial College London, London, UK, in 2004, and a PhD degree in control theory and engineering from Shanghai Jiao Tong University in 2000. He (co-)authored three research monographs: Control of Power Inverters in Renewable Energy and Smart Grid Integration (Wiley-IEEE Press, 2013), Robust Control of Time-Delay Systems (Springer-Verlag, 2006), Control of Integral Processes with Dead Time (Springer-Verlag, 2010). His fourth research monograph entitled Completely Autonomous Power Systems (CAPS): Next Generation Smart Grids is scheduled to appear in 2015. He, jointly with G. Weiss, invented the synchronverter technology to operate inverters to mimic synchronous generators, which was awarded Highly Commended at the 2009 IET Innovation Awards. He is the architect of the next-generation smart grid and a Specialist recognised by the State Grid Corporation of China (SGCC), a Fellow of the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET), a Senior Member of IEEE, the Vice-Chair of IFAC TC 6.3 (Power and Energy Systems) responsible for the Working Group on Power Electronics and was a Senior Research Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering/Leverhulme Trust, UK (2009–2010). He serves as an Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics, IEEE Access and the Conference Editorial Board of the IEEE Control Systems Society. His research focuses on advanced control theory and its applications in various sectors, including power electronics, renewable energy and smart grid integration, electric drives and electric vehicles, robust and H-infinity control, time-delay systems, process control, mechatronics. He has delivered workshops and tutorials at ACC2012, IEEE IECON 2012, IEEEE CDC 2012 and ACC2013 and is invited to give plenary talks at the Fourth IEEE Conference on Power Electronics for Distributed Generation Systems in Rogers, Arkansas, July 8-11, 2013, and the 6th IEEE Annual Green Technologies Conference in Corpus Christi, Texas, April 3-4, 2014, and a Distinguished Lecture at the 26th Chinese Control and Decision Conference, Changsha, China, May 31-June 2, 2014.