AIAAT Speakers

AIAAT 2024 Speakers

Prof. Dan Zhang
(Keynote Speaker)
Hong Kong Polytechnic University, HKSAR, China
Fellow of Canadian Academy of Engineering, ASME Fellow

Keynote Lecture: Development of the adaptive landing and aerial manipulation technology based on the generalized parallel mechanism and AI technology

 

Abstract:With the rapid development of technology such as computers and artificial intelligence, the technology of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in marine operations has become a current research hotspot. In recent years, rotary-wing UAVs have been widely used in many fields, such as ocean dynamic monitoring, marine disaster rescue, and maritime military confrontation, due to their low takeoff and landing requirements and hovering capabilities. However, under the effect of waves, marine platforms such as ships are constantly in a rocking state, which greatly increases the difficulty of UAV landing.

     In response to the application requirements of rotary-wing UAVs in sea platform takeoff and landing and aerial operations, a design and optimization scheme for a dual-mode aerial variable structure robot based on the generalized parallel mechanism is proposed. Two general performance indexes, terrain adaptability and landing stability, are proposed to evaluate the landing performance of adaptive landing gear.

     A general method for constructing a virtual parallel model has been proposed to describe the dynamic landing process of multi-legged landing gear on offshore platforms, and an adaptive buffering landing control algorithm is designed. To achieve better buffering effects, a search method for the non-rebound damping parameter is developed to determine the damping parameter of the system based on the landing gear state at the moment of landing. An adaptive buffering landing control system is established based on the optimized four-degree-of-freedom variable structure robot, and prototype experiments are conducted to verify the effectiveness of the control strategy and the advantages of the non-rebound damping parameter.

 

Biography: Professor Dan Zhang is a Chair Professor of Intelligent Robotics and Automation, and Director of Consortium for Intelligent Robotics Research at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. He received his PhD in Mechanical Engineering from Laval University, Canada in 2000. He joined Ontario Tech University (OTU), Canada, as Assistant Professor in 2004 and was promoted to Associate Professor and Professor in 2006 and 2011 respectively. During the appointment period in OTU, he also served as Founding Chair in the Department of Automotive, Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering (2012 – 2014) and was awarded the Canada Research Chair in Advanced Robotics and Automation (2009 – 2015). Since 2016, he transferred to York University, Canada as a Kaneff Professor and also took up the role of Department Chair in the Department of Mechanical Engineering from 2016 to 2018. Thereafter, he was awarded the Tier 1 York Research Chair in Advanced Robotics and Mechatronics in 2017.
      Professor Zhang's research interests include synthesis and optimization of parallel and hybrid mechanisms; generalized parallel mechanisms research; reconfigurable robots; innovation design of parallel robots: parallelization of serial robots; micro/nano manipulation and mems devices (e.g., sensors); rescue robots; smart biomedical instruments (e.g., exoskeleton robots and rehabilitation robotics); AI/robotics/autonomous systems; Aerial and Underwater Robotics; Artificial Intelligence for Robotics; intelligent reconfigurable adaptive landing gear and manipulator (manipulander).
      Professor Zhang is a well-accomplished educator and an internationally renowned expert in the areas of parallel robotic machines and their applications in manufacturing systems. His influential scientific contributions have led to novel robotic system designs and development of new comprehensive models for better understanding of globe stiffness and robotic calibrations. His research applications have tackled some of the world's most challenging problems in high dynamic performance manufacturing robotic systems. His leadership has resulted in significant contributions to the areas of robotics, mechatronics, reconfigurable/sustainable manufacturing systems and MEMS devices. His accomplishments have been recognized by many honors and awards including Canada Research Chair, Research Excellence Awards, Tier 1 York Research Chair, Lassonde Innovation Awards --- Established Researcher, Early Researcher Award by Ministry of Research and Innovation, Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering (CAE), Fellow of the Engineering Institute of Canada (EIC), Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and Fellow of the Canadian Society for Mechanical Engineering (CSME).
      Professor Zhang has published 266 journal papers and 190 conference papers, 12 books, 9 book chapters and numerous other technical publications. Professor Zhang has served as a General Chair for 69 International Conferences and delivered 122 keynote speeches. Professor Zhang is listed as the World’s Top Two Percent Researchers by Stanford’s Standardized Citation Indicators in 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023.

Prof. Weidong Chen
(Keynote Speaker)
Shanghai Jiaotong University, China

Keynote Lecture: Improving Autonomy and Safety of Intelligent Wheelchair

 

Abstract: Intelligent wheelchair is a typical mobility assistive robot designed to assist a user with a physical disability or cognitive impairments. Intelligent wheelchairs are interacting closely with humans and performing navigation tasks in human environments with unpredictable changes, the autonomy and safety issues are more essential for these complex and challenging situations. In this talk, I will introduce our recent work on intelligent wheelchair with emphasis on autonomy and human-safety in the aspects of mapping, localization, navigation and human-robot interaction. Aiming at the localization and navigation problems of mobile robots in dynamic and crowded environments, we proposed a systematic method for localizability-based localization and path planning as well as Long-term navigation based on spatio-temporal map prediction. The prototype systems of intelligent wheelchair developed in our lab, as well as experimental studies in real and dynamic environments will be presented for illustrating our methodologies and applications.

 

Biography: Weidong Chen received his B.S. and M.S. degrees in Control Engineering in 1990 and 1993, and Ph.D. degree in Mechatronics in 1996, respectively, all from the Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, China. Since 1996, he has been at the Shanghai Jiao Tong University where he is currently a Professor of the Department of Automation, and the Deputy Dean of the Institute of Medical Robotics. He is the founder of the Autonomous Robot Laboratory. From 2013 to 2019, he served as the Chair of the Department of Automation. He was a visiting professor in the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at the University of Zurich in Switzerland in 2012. He has been a visiting professor in the Brain Science Life Support Research Center at the University of Electro-Communications in Japan since 2016. Dr. Chen obtained the Shanghai Science and Technology Progress Award, the Shanghai Teaching Achievement Award, the Service Robotics Best Paper Award of the IEEE ICRA conference. Dr. Chen’s current research interests include perception and control of robotic systems, multi-robot systems and medical robotics.

 

 


Prof. Lim Tong Ming
(Keynote Speaker)
Director, Centre for Business Incubation and Entrepreneurial Ventures (CBIEV)
Tunku Abdul Rahman University of Management and Technology, Malaysia

Keynote Lecture: A Journey on Domain Specific LLM

 

Abstract: This sharing is on the design and development of domain specific LLM for a number of industries in Malaysia. The talk covers steps and pitfalls that learned from a few projects with the industries, both from the plain fundamental LLM model to the RAG model on top of the pretrained models. The talk also shares with audiences the different impacts of prompts used so that it is practical to the end users.

 

Biography: Prof Lim has about 10 years of commercial software and close 20 years of academic experiences with two software companies and four universities respectively. Having many years of industry exposure, Prof Lim understands well the needs of the IT industry. His experience has allowed him to have deep understanding of industrial driven applied research projects. Prof Lim's research areas span from object technologies on software engineering to databases, peer to peer technologies, knowledge sharing to social media analytics and social influence maximization. He has completed many grants where these grants are secured from FRGS, eScience, SKMM, MDec, Monash Internal grant, UTAR internal grant and Sunway Internal grant. Many master students under his supervision have graduated from Monash University, Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman and Sunway University in the last 15 years. Currently Prof Lim is the Director for CBIEV and Professor in FOCS. He is a professional ACM member and is currently society affiliate member of IEEE association.

 

 









AIAAT Past Speakers

Prof. Dan Zhang

York University, Canada

Prof. Tor Aulin

Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden

Prof. Makoto Iwasaki

Fellow of IEEE, IEEJ, JSPE

Nagoya Institute of Technology, Japan

Prof. Hanxiong Li

IEEE Fellow

The City University of Hong Kong, HKSAR, China

Prof.Ge Chen

Donghua University, China

Prof. Seiji Hashimoto

GUNMA UNIVERSITY, Japan

Prof. Tarek A. El-Ghazawi

The George Washington University, USA

Prof. Wilson Q. Wang

Lakehead University, Canada

Prof. Zhufeng Shao

Tsinghua University, China

Dr. Haijun SHAN

Zhejiang Lab, China