RobCE 2024 | Edinburgh, UK

RobCE 2024 Speakers

Prof. Shane Xie
(Keynote Speaker)

University of Leeds, UK

Keynote Lecture: Advanced Robotics with Enhanced Autonomy and Intelligence for Effective Medical Rehabilitation

Abstract: Globally, 15M people suffer a stroke every year, causing 6M deaths and leaving another 5M permanently disabled, which makes stroke the second leading cause of disability worldwide . In the UK, strokes affect over 152,000 Britons each year. Currently, there are over 1.2 million people living with the effects of stroke in the UK, and the estimated direct and indirect costs of stroke care for the NHS are >£9 billion a year. According to UK Guidelines for stroke rehabilitation, patients should receive at least 45 minutes of therapy per day for a minimum of 5 days per week; however, this standard has never been met due to the deceasing availability of rehabilitation services and increasing pressure on the NHS. In the UK, there are > 600,000 stroke patients that live further than 20km from a stroke support group, and the majority of them have severe mobility issues, it would be very challenging and costly, or even impossible for them to travel and receive regular rehabilitation treatment in hospitals or rehabilitation centers. The NHS' Five Year Forward View made recommendations in 2017 to bring rehabilitation to people in their own homes and care homes.
This talk will discuss the key societal challenges and robotic technologies for delivering effective care and opportunities for the healthcare industry. It will cover the recent development of robotics for stroke rehabilitation, the research gaps and the need for new technologies in neuroscience, robotics, control and artificial intelligence. The talk will also introduce a EPSRC-funded project on intelligent reconfigurable exoskeletons tailored to meet patients’ needs, deliver effective diagnosis and personalised treatment, and monitored remotely by rehabilitation therapists. The key projects conducted at the Leeds Centre for Assistive/Rehabilitation Robotics will be introduced including peanumatic Peano muscle, DEA, soft exoskeleton, bilaterial robot, neuromuscular and brain computer interfaces. The focus is placed on the enabling technologies for those whose strength and coordination have been affected by amputation, stroke, spinal cord injury, cerebral palsy and ageing.

Biography: Professor Shane (Sheng Quan) Xie has over 30 years of research experience in the field of robotics and exoskeletons. He is currently a Chair Professor of Robotics and Autonomous Systems, Director of the Mechatronics and Robotics programme and Director of the Rehabilitation Robotics Lab at the University of Leeds, and was previously the Director of the Rehabilitation and Medical Robotics Centre at the University of Auckland. He has published > 450 refereed papers and 8 books in rehabilitation exoskeleton design and control, neuromuscular modelling, and advanced human-robot interaction. He established the world-first Masters programme in Medical Devices and Technologies in 2010 involving 10 medical devices companies and researchers from both engineering and medical fields. He was a Technical Editor for the IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics and is the editor-in-chief for the International journal of Biomechatronics and Biomedical Robotics. He led many government funded research projects as principle investigator and has completed over 50 funded research projects totalling over £30M of research contracts from government granting agencies and industries. He has had over 15 post docs, 60 PhDs and 80 postgraduate students and his team has invented three award-winning rehabilitation exoskeletons and developed iterative learning algorithms for exoskeletons to interact with patients. He has conducted extensive clinical studies of robot-assisted rehabilitation on stroke patients, and has strong links with clinical, industry and research affiliates in the medical space and world leading hospitals throughout NZ, Asia, US and Europe. He is an elected Fellow of Engineering New Zealand, Fellow of IEEE, ASME and the Institution of Mechanical Engineers UK.

Prof. Zhengtao Ding
(Keynote Speaker)

The University of Manchester, UK

Keynote Lecture: Cooperative and Finite-Time Formation Control of Autonomous Robots and Vehicles

Abstract: In this network-connected world, many tasks require coordination and cooperation of subsystems/agents via network connection. Multi-agent systems are good examples of interplay between network communication and control applications. Finite-time control and finite-time mechanisms have been significantly developed to ensure the convergence of controlled variables in finite-time, and hence it is very appealing to various applications, including cooperative control of autonomous systems such as robotics and vehicles. This talk will briefly review some fundamental concepts of multi-agent systems and finite-time control mechanisms, and their further developments in engineering applications. It will then focus on formation and cooperative control mobile robots and autonomous vehicles. In particular, the talk will cover in details of some important methods, such as affine and bearing-only formation control algorithms which rely on the stress matrices and bearing. It will also cover distributed motion control algorithms to ensure autonomous overtaking of autonomous vehicles in a dynamic environment using the Artificial Potential Field (APF) method based on a robust autonomous vehicle platoon system.

Biography: Zhengtao Ding received B.Eng. degree from Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, and M.Sc. degree in systems and control, and the Ph.D. degree in control systems from the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology, Manchester, U.K. After working in Singapore for ten years, he joined the University of Manchester in 2003, where he holds the title of Professor of Control Systems. He has authored/co-authored three books, including the book Nonlinear and Adaptive Control Systems (IET, 2013) and has published over 300 research articles. His research interests include nonlinear and adaptive control theory and their applications, more recently network-based control, distributed optimization and distributed learning, with applications to power systems and robotics. Prof. Ding serves/has served as the Editor in Chief of Drones and Autonomous Vehicles, Subject Chef Editor of Nonlinear Control for Frontiers, and Associate Editor for Scientific Reports, IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, IEEE Transactions on Circuit and Systems II, IEEE Control Systems Letters, Transactions of the Institute of Measurement and Control, Control Theory and Technology, Unmanned Systems and several other journals. He is a member of IEEE Technical Committee on Nonlinear Systems and Control, IEEE Technical Committee on Intelligent Control, and IFAC Technical Committee on Adaptive and Learning Systems.