Keynote Speeches

1 Professor Emil Levi

Professor of Electric Machines and Drives

Live rpool John Moores University, UK

Biography

Emil Levi received his Dipl. Ing. degree from the University of Novi Sad, Yugoslavia in 1982 and his MSc and the PhD degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of Belgrade, Yugoslavia in 1986 and 1990, respectively. From 1982 till 1992 he was with the Dept. of Electrical Engineering, University of Novi Sad. He joined Liverpool John Moores University, UK in May 1992, where he was promoted to a Reader in 1995 and appointed to a Full Professorship in September 2000 as Professor of Electric Machines and Drives. He served as a Co-Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Trans. on Industrial Electronics in the 2009-2013 period and as Editor-in-Chief of the IET Electric Power Applications from 2010 until 2022. Emil is currently serving as Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Trans. on Industrial Electronics (2019-2024) He is a Fellow of the IEEE and the recipient of the Cyril Veinott award of the IEEE Power and Energy Society for 2009 and the Best Paper award of the IEEE Trans. on Industrial Electronics for 2008. He is also a recipient of the European Power Electronics (EPE) Association “Outstanding Achievement Award” for 2014, “Professor Istvan Nagy Award” of the Power Electronics and Motion Control (PEMC) Council for 2018, and is a Foreign Member of the Serbian Academy of Engineering.

Title: A Review of Electric Vehicle Battery Charging Solutions

Abstract

Electrification of the passenger vehicles has significantly accelerated in recent times, with numerous countries setting the target for cessation of pure combustion engine car manufacturing within the next 10 to 20 years. The presentation will commence with an overview of the current EV market, with emphasis on the inverter power rating, dc-link voltage level, and a multitude of different charging options and charging levels for wired charging. After a very brief description of the wireless charging, the rest of the talk will deal with wired chargers, at first of non-integrated on-board type. Topologies of semi-integrated on-board chargers will be surveyed next, including those with integration of either the propulsion motor or the inverter in the charging process. This will be followed by some solutions that provide full integration of on-board chargers and which may become accepted in the future by EV manufacturers. All currently known fully integrated charger topologies involve multiphase (more than three phases) inverters and machines.

2 Professor Jianwei Zhang

Institute of Technical Aspects of Multimodal Systems

Department of Informatics

University of Hamburg, Germany

Biography

Jianwei Zhang is professor and Director of Technical Aspects of Multimodal Systems, Department of Informatics, Universität Hamburg. He is Academician of the German National Academy of Engineering Sciences and the Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Hamburg Germany. He is also Distinguished Visiting Professor of Tsinghua University. He received both his Bachelor of Engineering (1986, Computer Control, with distinction) and Master of Engineering (1989, AI) at the Department of Computer Science of Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, and his PhD (1994, Robotics) at the Institute of Real-Time Computer Systems and Robotics, Department of Computer Science, University of Karlsruhe, Germany. Jianwei Zhang´s research interests include multimodal information (visual, auditory, tactile, etc.) processing; cognitive sensor fusion for robot perception; real-time learning algorithms; modelling of sensory-motor control tasks; natural human-robot interaction; learning and control of robot grasping and in-hand manipulation; experience-based robot learning; best view algorithm for active robot vision; mobile manipulation service robots, etc. In these areas, he has published over 500 journal and conference papers, and holds over 50 patents of robot mechatronic design, novel robot arms and end-effectors, modular robots, etc. He is the General Chair of IEEE MFI (Multisensor Fusion and Integration) 2012, the Robotics Flagship Congress IEEE/RSJ IROS (Intelligent Robots and Systems) 2015, and HCR (Human-Centred Robotics) 2018, and Associated VP of IEEE Robotics Automation Society CAB, etc. Jianwei Zhang is the coordinator of the DFG/NSFC Transregional Collaborative Research Centre SFB/TRR169 “Crossmodal Learning: Adaptivity, Prediction and Interaction” since 2015. He also leads several EU robotics projects, including the RACE (Robustness by Autonomous Competence Enhancement) Project which was the first to apply high-level learning, planning and reasoning AI methods to service robots. He has received multiple best paper awards at several major robotic conferences.

Title: Robust robot cognition and control driven by large multimodal data and models

Abstract

Robot systems are needed to solve real-world challenges by combining data-based machine learning with cognitive, kinematic, dynamic as well as physical models of cognitive abilities in intelligent systems. There has been substantial progress in deep neural networks and LLMs in terms of data-driven benchmarking. However, such data-driven systems are computationally very costly and not yet interpretable, while most model-based approaches are not robust in an unstructured, dynamic, and changing world. My talk will first introduce concepts of cognitive systems that allow a robot to better understand multimodal scenarios by integrating knowledge and learning and then the necessary modules to enhance the robot intelligence level. Then I will explain how a robot can consolidate its model as a result of learning from experiences; and how such cross-modal learning methods can be realized in intelligent robots. In the end, I will demonstrate several novel robot systems with human-robot interaction, dexterous walking, and manipulation skills in potential service applications.

3 Professor Guang-Ren Duan

Honorary Director of the Center for Control Theory and Guidance Technology Harbin Institute of Technology, China

Dean for the School of Automation and Intelligent Manufacturing Southern University of Science and Technology, China

Biography

Guang-Ren Duan received his Ph.D. degree in Control Systems Sciences from Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, P. R. China, in 1989. After a two-year post-doctoral experience at the same university, he became professor of control systems theory at that university in 1991. From December 1996 to October 2002, he visited the University of Hull, the University of Sheffield, and also the Queen's University of Belfast, UK. He is the founder and presently the Honorary Director of the Center for Control Theory and Guidance Technology at Harbin Institute of Technology. Recently, he has also established the Center for Control Science and Technology at the Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech) and is serving as the Dean for the School of Automation and Intelligent Manufacturing at SUSTech. He is a Member of the Science and Technology Committee of the Chinese Ministry of Education, and has served as Vice President of the Control Theory and Applications Committee, Chinese Association of Automation (CAA), and Associate Editor of a few international journals. His main research interests include fully actuated system theories for nonlinear systems, parametric control systems design, descriptor systems, spacecraft control and magnetic bearing control. He has published 5 books and over 450 SCI indexed publications. He is an Academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Fellow of CAA, IEEE and IET.

Title: Fully Actuated System Approach for Control---An introduction

Abstract

State-space models are convenient for solving the state vectors (including their estimates and their infinite-time behaviour), but are not for the control vectors. Consequently, from the mid 1990, the state-space approach has encountered great difficulties in dealing with control of nonlinear systems. Apparently, there is no doubt that a model from which the control vector can be explicitly solved would best perform the control. To solve a control problem, such a model for control is much more preferred to a state-space one. Inspired by the practical mechanical fully actuated systems, a type of extended fully actuated system (FAS) models are established, from which the control vectors can indeed be explicitly solved. Eventually, a FAS approach, which is parallel to the well-known state-space one, has been proposed for general dynamical control system analysis and designs. The FAS approach has found its great power in dealing with control of complicated nonlinear dynamical systems, including time-varying nonlinear systems with time-varying delays, constrained systems and complex nonholonomic systems. In this talk, a brief introduction to FAS approach is provided, some reported results on analysis and design of control systems based on FAS approach are reviewed, and new directions and problems related to control systems analysis and designs using FAS approach are also outlined.