Keynote Speakers

Prof. Mahmoud Shafik

University of Derby, UK

Professor Mahmoud Shafik is an international expert who has made a personal distinction and international leadership recognition, in the field of Intelligent Mechatronics Systems and Technology, with more than 20-years industrial applied research experience in Mechatronics Systems Hardware and Software, Precision Engineering, 3D Smart Actuators for Autonomous Vehicle, Robotic Systems and Machine Vision, Electric Cars: Steer-by-wire, Sustainable Rail Transport Infrastructure, Innovation for Sustainable Engineering, Control and instrumentation, Cancer Treatment using CVD Diamond Radio Therapy Technology, Information Technology for Blind and Visually Impaired people, Chronic Diseases ICT Technological Solutions, Assisted Living Technology, AD-HOC Wireless Technology, TeleHealth, Telecare, CO2 and Climate Change, Electro-Rheological Fluid Micro Actuators Technology, and Software Tools. Professor Shafik has been leading several industrial applied research projects from European Commission and UK Research Council, of a budget of several millions of Euro’s and have made a great economic and social impact in his area of expertise in UK and EU, as a whole. His research work has brought many innovative outcomes that have been used commercially by a number of Small to Medium and Large enterprise organisations around the world.

Industry 4.0, Steer and Fly by Wire: Towards Connected Autonomous and Hover Vehicles for Future Smart Cities Applications
 

Abstract: Industry 4.0, Internet of Everything (IoE), 5G, Big Data, Cloud, Edge, and Distributed Computing Technology are shaping the future of Traffic and Transportation Systems. As such advanced tools enable the evolution of vehicles technology within the sector and facilitate vehicle-to-vehicle communication, real-time update, connected end-users, and service providers. These ultimately pointing to a closed loop traffic and transportation systems, accidents and crises prevention, and proactive real-time lifestyle management. There is no doubt that such ambitious platform solution is possible to reach in the near future. However, there are a number of challenges that we are still dealing with before we move towards such connected autonomous and hover vehicles platform solution. This is including reliability, safety, adaptation of green technology, cyber and data security. Steer by wire are one of the most modern and great approaches of electric and autonomous vehicle technology. This is where all the complications of steering using complex mechanical elements have been substituted by electric motors and controlled by modern control systems. However, every groundbreaking technology comes with some issues and challenges and one of the above related challenges to this technology is reliability, safety, and battery lifetime. In This talk we will explore some of the case studies explored and become integrated part of the developed and under development electric and autonomous vehicles technology to overcome these challenges. It is believed that industrial revolution and evolution in technology always offers many great improvements, however, end-user expectation is constantly beyond what the technology can offer. It is all the time the ambition is to develop a fly by wire hover vehicles, that can be driven and flown to meet dynamic environment. There are a variety of ongoing research programmes effort and some prototypes have been developed. However, the big question is, how such development could be impacted on the traffic and transportation systems, and how these vehicles will be connected, and collaborated to talking to each other. The talk will also explore some of the vision about the future hover vehicles assistance approach using blockchain and the likely impact in the existing traffic and signalling system. The adaptation of green technology is also one of major challenge and industry endeavour to deal with the climate changes challenges and meet the world zero carbon agenda in 2050. The talk will be concluded with some of the under developm

 

Prof. Roberto Montemanni

University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Italy

Roberto Montemanni is full professor of operations research at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Italy. He also acts as an external research advisor at the Dalle Molle Institute for Artificial Intelligence, University of Lugano, Switzerland. He obtained a Laurea degree in Computer Science from the University of Bologna, Italy and a Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from the University of Glamorgan, UK. He has been administrating grants for millions of Euros and leading basic and applied research projects both at national and international levels. His main research interests are in the fields of mathematical modeling, algorithms and machine learning, with applications mainly in transportations, logistics and bioinformatics.

Deliveries with Drones
 

Abstract: Unmanned vehicles, and aerial drones in particular, are becoming of great interest in many sectors ranging from precision agriculture to catastrophic events management and freight delivery. Logistics operators are concretely considering the use of these vehicles for deliveries to customers, due to the potential economical advantages and flexibility of such a solution. In this talk we will evaluate the impact of drones, when used together with traditional vehicles like trucks, from an economic/optimisation perspective. We will describe the research problem named “traveling salesman problem with drone” and we will discuss how to solve it through mathematical programming and metaheuristic algorithms. By analysing the results achieved on realistic instances, we will then quantify the theoretical economical gain that a Company can achieve by employing drones. General considerations will close the talk.

 

Prof. Rochdi Merzouki

University of Lille, France

Rochdi Merzouki is a Professor in Robotics and Mechatronics at CRIStAL laboratory, University of Lille. He is the head of the International Master in Robotics and Transport (MRT) and System of Systems Engineering (SofTE) research group. He was the coordinator of the EU project Intelligent Transportation for Dynamic Port Environment (InTraDE 09-15), where he contributed with his team in designing intelligent autonomous vehicle IAV and he is currently project coordinator of the EU Interreg 2seas project Cooperative Brachytherapy (CoBra 18- 22). His main research interests are: system of systems engineering, modelling, control of autonomous and soft robotics.

 

Prof. Alexey Vinel

Halmstad University, Sweden

Alexey Vinel (1983) is a professor at the University of Passau, Passau, Germany, since 2022, where he is heading the Chair of Reliable Distributed Systems. He has been a professor with the School of Information Technology, Halmstad, Halmstad University, Sweden, since 2015 (part-time since 2022). He was professor II at Western Norway University of Applied Sciences, Bergen, Norway in 2018-2021. He received the Ph.D. degrees from the Tampere University of Technology, Tampere, Finland, in 2013, and from the Institute for Information Transmission Problems, Moscow, Russia, in 2007. He is the Senior Member of IEEE (2012). His areas of interests include wireless communications, vehicular networking, and cooperative autonomous driving.

Autonomous Vehicles: Wireless Networking for Cooperative Maneuvering
 

Abstract: Last year Elon Musk posted in his Twitter that he had realized that self-driving cars are a "hard problem". We believe that enabling communication between the vehicles is an essential necessary step for cracking this problem in context of fully autonomous urban driving. We will share some of our recent research results on autonomous vehicles with a focus on inter-vehicular networking and respective cooperative driving functionalities. Platooning, i.e. an automatic following of wirelessly connected vehicles closely behind each other, will be presented slightly deeper. We will explain the approach of assessing the safety of the platooning functionality by coupling the quality of radio communications to the likelihood of a rear-end collision. We gratefully acknowledge the support from the Swedish Knowledge Foundation (KKS) in the framework of ”Safety of Connected Intelligent Vehicles in Smart Cities – SafeSmart” project (2019–2023), the Swedish Innovation Agency (VINNOVA) in the framework of ”Emergency Vehicle Traffic Light Preemption in Cities – EPIC” project (2020–2022) and the ELLIIT Strategic Research Network.