Current Unmanned Technology Research for the Military Robots in Korea

Prof. Ju-Jang Lee

KAIST, Korea
URL: http://iliad.kaist.ac.kr

Abstract:

The Unmanned technology is now one of key features on the future combat scenario. For example, USA support various military projects to train the high-tech soldiers, land warrior and object force warrior, and to develop the small reconnaissance robots. Korea also established the plan of the military reform in 2005, and started to support the research and development for building more advanced and scientific armed force. In this presentation, we focus on the current research issues on unmanned technology for developing the future warfare robot like the unmanned ground vehicle (UGV), the unmanned undersea vehicle (UUV), and the unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) in Korea.

Especially for the UGV, one of the most important issues is autonomous navigation. Autonomous navigation in rough terrain should consider the following problems; integrated path planning considering the global and local maps , multi-sensor fusion for 3D world modeling, traversability assessment of terrain for the safe and fast navigation, localization of the vehicle based on given sensor information, and dynamics control of the UGV.

Biography:

Ju-Jang Lee was born in Seoul, Korea, in 1948. He received the B.S. and M.S. degrees from Seoul National University, Seoul, in 1973 and 1977, respectively, and the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in 1984. He joined the Department of Electrical Engineering, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Daejeon, Korea, in 1984, where he is currently a Professor. In 1987, he was a Visiting Professor with the Robotics Laboratory, Imperial College Science and Technology, London, U.K. From 1991 to 1992, he was a Visiting Scientist with the Robotics Department, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA. His research interests are in the areas of intelligent control of mobile robots, service robotics for the disabled, space robotics, evolutionary computation, variable structure control, chaotic control systems, electronic control units for automobiles, and power system stabilizers. Dr. Lee is a member of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society, the IEEE Evolutionary Computation Society, and the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society. He was the President of the Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems in Korea and a Counsel of the Society of Instrument and Control Engineers in Japan.

 

Magflexonics for precision mechatronics and bio-inspired applications

Prof. Kok-Meng Lee

Georgia Institute of Technology, USA
URL: http://www.me.gatech.edu/aimrl/

Abstract:

Motivated by the needs to accommodate size/shape variations in non-traditional robotics and emerging human-centered applications，this talk presents recently developed novel methods (referred to here as magflexonics) that enable uses of embedded magnetic fields for cost-effective design/control of flexible structures while allowing for natural or engineered compliance. As a medium of energy conversion and signal transmission, magnetic fields exist everywhere in our daily life, and have contributed to the rapid advances in computing, communication, and information technologies. Magnetic fields are also increasingly used in a spectrum of modern mechatronic devices, instrumentation and actuation because they are instantaneous and invariant to pressure, temperature and other environmental factors. This talk reviews the past and present state-of-the-arts of magnetics for precision mechatronics, and presents recently developed magflexonics for applications that require multi degrees of freedom motions. Magflexonics, which unlike traditional approaches, take advantages of low-cost computational intelligence into design, requires no explicit position sensor or information for real-time feedback control. Selected examples are given to help illustrate these impacts and yet to cover a wide variety of robotic, automation and mechatronic applications.

The intended audience of this talk includes engineers, undergraduates, graduate students and faculty with technology backgrounds, but not necessarily in magnetics.  The objective is to stimulate discussions of emerging magflexonics and its potential applications to address emerging problems facing society in a rapidly changing world.

Biography:

Dr. Kok-Meng Lee earned his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in mechanical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1982 and 1985, respectively. He has been with the Georgia Institute of Technology since 1985. As Professor of mechanical engineering, his research interests include system dynamics and control, robotics, automation and optomechatronics. He holds eight U.S. patents. Dr. Lee is a Fellow of ASME and IEEE. He is currently the Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE/ASME Transactions of Mechatronics for which he served as an Editor from 1995 to 1999. He has held representative positions within the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society: he founded and chaired the Technical Committees on Manufacturing Automation (1996 to 1998) and on Prototyping for Robotics and Automation; and served as Chair or Co-Chair for numerous international conferences and on the AIM Conference Advisory Committee. His awards include Presidential Young Investigator (PYI) Award, Sigma Xi Junior Faculty Award, International Hall of Fame New Technology Award, and the Woodruff Faculty Fellow. He was also recognized as an advisor for seven Best Student Paper Awards and a Best Thesis Award.  He is also Professor of China “1000 Talent Plan” at the Huazhong University of Science and Technology, and visiting Pao Yu-Kong Chair Professor at the Zhejiang University.

 

Dynamics, Control and Cooperation in Multi-agent Systems: From Synchronization to Networked Control

Prof. Frank Allgower

University of Stuttgart, Germany
URL: http://www.ist.uni-stuttgart.de

Abstract:

The rapid pace of innovation in the areas of control, computation, and communication is leading the way for the class of networked multi-agent systems that are characterized by their complex interconnections, diversity of components, and the interactions with the physical world and possibly humans. These systems offer a vision of increased automation and benefit for society from environmental, economic, and social perspectives. Examples of such systems include automated transportation networks, distributed power generation (“smart-grids”), groups of autonomous vehicles, or interacting groups of robots, to name just a few. These growing application areas with their challenging performance specifications do require a solid theoretical foundation in order to understand, influence and design the dynamical behavior of these complex systems. The constituent parts of interconnected systems are the individual dynamical subsystems, the interconnection topology between the subsystems, and the individual links used to realize the interconnections. All three parts can be of different complexity yielding three dimensions of complexity in interconnected systems that are often summarized in the so-called complexity cube with its dimensions system complexity, topological complexity and link complexity. System complexity is the classical focus of systems and control theory and refers to the complexity of the individual subsystems. Topological complexity is commonly described using interconnection graphs. Finally the link complexity takes into account that individual communication links are imperfect, e.g., because of transmission delays or effect of packed switched networks. It turns out that the three dimensions of complexity cannot be addressed independently. Elevated complexity along one dimension usually yields constraints along the other dimensions. In this talk, the tradeoff between system complexity, topological complexity and link complexity in networked multi-agent systems will be explored. We will give an overview over the state of the art and will show that many of today’s challenges in applications can be addressed with the methods developed over the past few years.

Biography:

Frank Allgöwer is director of the Institute for Systems Theory and Automatic Control at the University of Stuttgart in Germany. He studied Engineering Cybernetics and Applied Mathematics in Stuttgart and at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) respectively and received his Ph.D. degree from the University of Stuttgart. Prior to his present appointment he held a professorship in the electrical engineering department at ETH Zurich and visiting positions at Caltech, the NASA Ames Research Center, the DuPont Company, the University of California at Santa Barbara and the University of Newcastle in Australia.

Frank's main interests in research and teaching are in the area of systems and control with emphasis on the development of new methods for the analysis and control of nonlinear systems and networks of systems. Of equal importance to the theoretical developments are practical applications and the experimental evaluation of benefits and limitations of the developed methods. Applications span a wide range from nanotechnological systems to systems biology.

At present Frank is Editor for the journal Automatica and for the Springer Lecture Notes in Control and Information Sciences series and serves as Associate Editor and on the editorial board of several further journals. He is on the Council of the International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC), is on the Board of Governors of the IEEE Control System Society (CSS) and has been on the Board of Governors of the European Union Control Association.

Frank received several recognitions for his work including the appointment as IFAC Fellow, the state teaching award of Baden-Wurttemberg, the IFAC Distinguished Service Award and the Leibniz Award, which is the most prestigious prize in science and engineering awarded by the German Research Foundation DFG.

Smart robot and sensor design: From small intestine to the moon

Prof. Max Q.-H. Meng

The Chinese University of Hong Kong, China
URL: http://www.ee.cuhk.edu.hk/~qhmeng/

Abstract:

Sensors and robots are building blocks of modern intelligent systems widely used in areas spanning from medical diagnosis and treatment to space exploration. For the past decade, rapid progress has been made in micro sensor and robot design and development. In this talk, our recent research work on micro sensor and robotic system design and development will be presented, with emphasis on their applications in a wide range of application fields from active wireless capsule endoscopy, to moon rover navigation systems. Experience and lessons learned will be reflected and future outlook of potential applications will be discussed.

Biography:

Max Q.-H. Meng received his Ph.D. degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Victoria, Canada, in 1992, following his Master's degree from Beijing Institute of Technology in 1988. He has been a Professor of Electronic Engineering at the Chinese University of Hong Kong since 2002, after working for 10 years in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Alberta in Canada as the Director of the ART (Advanced Robotics and Teleoperation) Lab, holding the positions of Assistant Professor (1994), Associate Professor (1998), and Professor (2000), respectively. He is jointly appointed as an Overseas Outstanding Scholar Chair Professor of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Dean of the School of Control Science and Engineering at Shandong University in China. His research interests include robotics and active medical devices, tele-medicine and healthcare, bio-sensors and sensor networks, network enabled systems and services, and adaptive and intelligent systems. He has published more than 350 journal and conference papers and book chapters and led more than 30 funded research projects to completion as Principal Investigator. He has served as an editor of the IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics and an associate editor of the IEEE Transactions on Fuzzy Systems, and is currently a technical editor of Advanced Robotics, Journal of Advanced Computational Intelligence and Intelligent Informatics, and International Journal of Information Acquisition. He served as an Associate VP for Conferences of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (2004-2007), an AdCom member of the IEEE Neural Network Council/Society (2003-2006), and a member of the IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics Management Committee (2001-2006). He was the General Chair of IEEE CIRA 2001, IROS 2005, AIM 2008, and WCICA 2010 conferences. He is a recipient of the IEEE Third Millennium Medal award and is a Fellow of IEEE.