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Home › Workshop on Autonomous Vehicles and Mobile Robotics (July 2014)

Speakers

 

 Invited Speakers:

 Industrial Participation:

Prof. Stefano Stramigioli received the M.Sc. with Honors in 1992 and PhD with honors in 1998. Between the two degrees he worked as a researcher at University of Twente. Since 1998 he has been faculty member and working as full professor of Advanced Robotics and chair holder of the Robotics and Mechatronics group at the University of Twente. He is an Officer and Senior member of IEEE. He has been Director of the Strategic Research Orientation of the IMPACT of the University of Twente. He has about 200 publications including 4 books, book chapters, journal and conference contributions. He is the emeritus Editor in Chief of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Magazine which he brought to be the journal of robotics with the highest IF (3.0), Editor in Chief of the IEEE ITSC Newsletter, he is a member of the Editorial Board of the Springer Journal of Intelligent Service Robotics and he is currently the Vice President for Member Activities of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society. He has been an  AdCom member for IEEE RAS.  He is a member of the ESA Topical Team on Dynamics of Prehension in Micro-gravity and its application to Robotics and Prosthetics.

In the workshop he is going to give an overview of activities will be presented which are taking place at the LEO center of Service Robotics of the University of Twente. Issues related to medical developments will be shown including robotized steerable endoscope systems as well as a number of activities related to robot inspections which is a field of increasing interest in the lab.

Prof. Indra Narayan Kar received the Bachelor of Engineering degree from Bengal Engineering College, India, in 1988, and the M.Tech. and Ph.D. degrees from Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, India, in 1991 and 1997, respectively, all in electrical engineering. He worked as a research student at Nihon University, Tokyo, under the Japanese government Monbusho scholarship program from 1996 to 1998. He was a Lecturer of Electrical Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, India from 1998 to 1999).  He is currently a Professor at the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi. He has several research projects from BRNS, Ministry of Information & Technology (one is completed and rest are in progress). He has more than 95 papers to his credit published in refereed journals and presented in conference proceedings. He also has conducted short term courses and workshops. His research interests include robust control theory and its applications, system identification, intelligent control, and mechatronics. 

Prof. Kolin Paul is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at IIT Delhi India. He received his B.E. degree in Electronics & Telecommunication Engineering from NIT Silchar in 1992 and Ph.D. in Computer Science in 2002 from BE College (DU), Shibpore. During 2002-03 he did his post doctoral studies at Colorado State University, Fort Collins, USA. He has previously worked at IBM Software Labs. His last appointment was as a Lecturer in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Bristol, UK. His research interests are in understanding high performance architectures and compilation systems. In particular he works in the area of Adaptive/Reconfigurable Computing trying to understand its use and implications in embedded systems.

Laxmidhar Behera (S’92-M’03-SM’03) received the BSc (engineering) and MSc (engineering) degrees from NIT Rourkela in 1988 and 1990, respectively. He received the PhD degree from IIT Delhi. He has worked as an assistant professor at BITS Pilani during 1995- 1999 and pursued the postdoctoral studies in the German National Research Center for Information Technology, GMD, Sank Augustin, Germany, during 2000-2001. He is currently working as a professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering, IIT Kanpur. He joined the Intelligent Systems Research Center (ISRC), University of Ulster, United Kingdom, as a reader on sabbatical from IIT Kanpur during 2007-2009. He has also worked as a visiting researcher/professor at FHG, Germany, and ETH, Zurich, Switzerland. He has more than 180 papers to his credit published in refereed journals and presented in conference proceedings. His research interests include intelligent control, robotics, semantic signal/music processing, neural networks, control of cyber-physical systems and cognitive modeling. He is a senior member of the IEEE.

Prof. B. Ravindran is currently working as an Associate Professor at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras. He completed his Ph.D. at the Department of Computer Science, University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He worked with Prof. Andrew G. Barto on an algebraic framework for abstraction in Reinforcement Learning. His current research interests span the broader area of machine learning, ranging from Spatio-temporal Abstractions in Reinforcement Learning to social network analysis and Data/Text Mining. Much of the work in his group is directed toward understanding interactions and learning from them.

Col (Retd) Rajesh Gandhi completed M Tech in Computer Applications in 2005 from IIT Delhi. He has had a rich career in armed forces spanning 23 years with a focus on design and development of high technology systems for the armed forces. Col (Retd) Rajesh Gandhi was Head, Department of Simulator Development Division of Indian Army till Feb 2014. Simulator Development Division is a unique organization of Indian Army involved in design and development of complex technology for the armed forces. He led a team that designed & developed complex simulators for the weapon systems/combat vehicles. He was involved in making a road map and philosophy for development and induction of unmanned Ground vehicles for the Indian Army. He fostered partnership with academia/DRDO and industry for design and development of Unmanned Ground systems for the Indian Army. He was awarded Chief of Army staff Commendation card for design and development of complex technology for defense forces. Col (Retd ) Rajesh Gandhi took premature retirement from the Indian Army in Feb 2014 and  currently doing consultancy work and aspiring  to go for higher education in the field of Artificial Intelligence. He is going to deliver his talk on challenges in development and induction of unmanned systems for  defense forces.

Dr. Sarngadharan Panikkassery obtained his B.Tech Degree in Electrical Engineering from University of Calicut, Kerala in 1989. Subsequently he received training in Instrumentation Engineering from Training School, Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Mumbai. He has experience in design, installation and commissioning of instrumentation systems for nuclear backend process. He has expertise in setting-up and operating seismic observatories. He joined Autonomous Robotic Section of DRHR, BARC in 2006. Currently he is involved in design and development of robotic solutions for nuclear program. This includes AGV based material transfer system, portable manipulators, radiation survey systems etc.

Dr. Sankar Nath Shome, a 1980 mechanical engineering graduate from Bengal Engineering College (Now IIEST), Shibpur, completed his M.Tech from IIT Kanpur and PhD from NIT, Durgapur. He is currently working as Chief Scientist at CSIR-CMERI, Durgapur. He works primarily in the area of underwater robotics and Mechatronic systems. The robotic systems developed under his leadership are: Remotely operated mobile robotic system for Nuclear Power Corporation for collection of heavy water, Heavy Duty SCARA robot for TATA Steel for handling heavy hot objects in steel plant, mobile robotic system for visual inspection for Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research, Kalpakkam. He initiated various programmes on intelligent robotics at CSIR-CMERI. He has successfully implemented several projects related to underwater robotics e.g. Remotely Operated Vehicle for operation up to a depth of 200m and 500m at sea & Autonomous Underwater vehicle for operation up to a depth of 150m for the Ministry of Earth Sciences. He has a rich experience in coordinating multidisciplinary and multi-institutional projects. He received best project awards twice for ROV & first stage support system of Agni Missile. In 2013 he received Production engineering division prize from Institution of Engineers (India). He has published more than 60 research papers in referred journals and conferences. His talk will comprise of Underwater Robotics: Experimentation with ROV and AUV at CSIR-CMERI, Durgapur.

Prof. K Madhava Krishna is currently an Associate Professor at IIIT Hyderabad where has been heading the robotics activities at Robotics Research Center since 2005. His research interests lie primarily in Robotic Vision, Mobile and Multi Robotic Systems including Aerial Robots and Mechanism Design. He has published in a sustained manner in premier conferences in the areas of robotics, multi agents, control and vision. He was awarded Microsoft Young Researcher award for 2008-09 and best paper award in ICVGIP 2010. He obtained his PhD from department of Electrical Engineering at IIT Kanpur in 2001. He was a post doc fellow with Robotics and AI Lab, CNRS in 2002 and visiting faculty with CSCE dept at University of Arkansas 2003 and 2004. He will be discussing the Non Linear Time Scaling and its Application to Motion Planning and Autonomous Navigation.

Mr. Parag Krishnavadan Taktawala has graduated in the field of Electronics from Bombay University in the year 1988. He has been designing electronic, embedded systems for industries, long before graduation. His passion for electronics has been with him since the tender age of 10. Zenn Systems and associated Co's have been designing, installing & commissioning plant automation systems all over the country & abroad. Mr. Taktawala also has several IPR patents pending in India & abroad in the field of robotics. Presently the Co is also working with international partners for deep-sea pipe inspection robots, Ship inspection robots & active gas pipeline internal inspection robot. 

Mr. Bisvajit Sarkar  a Scientific Officer at Variable Energy Cyclotron Centre, Kolkata, India since 1998. He joined the Training School of Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Mumbai, India, in 1996 after completing his Bachelors degree course in Electrical Engineering from Jalpaiguri Government Engineering College, West Bengal, India, in the same year. During the last 15 years, apart from developing various software packages related to the operation of cyclotron, he was involved in research in the areas of computer animation, soft computing and mobile robot navigation. His foray into the area of mobile robotics started with the development of a mobile robot based system for online mapping of radiation dose inside the cyclotron vault. He is currently working towards his Ph.D. on "Localization of Mobile Robots in Indoor Environments using Laser Range Data". He will be discussing Building Maps of and Localization in Indoor Environments Using Laser Range Finder.

 

 

 

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