Professor, School of Electrical Engineering
Director, Statistical Inference and Information Theory Laboratory
Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST)

Introduction to Speaker

Junmo Kim received the B.S. degree from Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea, in 1998, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, in 2000 and 2005, respectively. From 2005 to 2009, he was with the Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology (SAIT), Korea, as a Research Staff Member. He joined the faculty of KAIST in 2009, where he is currently an Associate Professor of electrical engineering. His research interests are in image processing, computer vision, statistical signal processing, machine learning, and information theory.

Recent Advances and Challenges in Deep Learning for Computer Vision

There has been remarkable success in deep learning-based computer vision, including the invention of very deep convolutional neural networks (CNN) with more than 100 layers. However, there are still several challenges in deep learning-based computer vision such as automatic search of good architecture and hyperparameters, continual learning with additional data, adaptation to new environments, and network compression for mobile applications. This presentation introduces some of these key challenges and recent developments, including the achievements of our research group in these areas.

Associate Professor, Mechanical Engineering Department
Ag Director, Advanced Robotics Centre
National University of Singapore.

Introduction to Speaker

Marcelo H Ang Jr received his BSc and MSc degrees in Mechanical Engineering from the De La Salle University in the Philippines and University of Hawaii, USA in 1981 and 1985, respectively, and his PhD in Electrical Engineering from the University of Rochester, New York in 1988, where he became an Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering. In 1989, he joined the Department of Mechanical Engineering of the National University of Singapore where he is currently an Associate Professor and Acting Director of the Advanced Robotics Center. His research interests span the areas of robotics, mechatronics, autonomous systems, and applications of intelligent systems. He teaches robotics; creativity and innovation; applied electronics and instrumentation; computing; design and related topics. In addition to academic and research activities. He is also actively involved in the Singapore Robotic Games as its founding chairman, and the World Robot Olympiad as member of its Advisory Council.

Robotics towards Quality Living

Robotics science and technology have evolved from the seminal applications in industrial robotics for manufacturing to today’s varied applications in service, health care, education, entertainment and other industries including construction, mining and agriculture. One common theme in these emerging applications is the human-centered nature and applications in unstructured environments, where robotic systems surround humans, aiding and working with us to enrich and enhance the quality of our lives. This talk reviews the state-of-the-art developments in fundamental capabilities in both hardware and software. An example on a self-driving cars is presented. This talk will then conclude with the challenges in science and technology to further accelerate the robotics revolution.

Professor, Human Robotics
Department of Bioengineering
Imperial College London

Introduction to Speaker

Dr. Etienne Burdet is Chair of Human Robotics at the Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine in UK. He is also a visiting Professor at Nanyang Technology in Singapore and at University College London. He holds an MSc in Mathematics (1990), an MSc in Physics (1991), and a PhD in Robotics (1996), all from ETH-Zürich. He was a postdoctoral fellow with TE Milner from McGill University, Canada, JE Colgate from Northwestern University, USA and Mitsuo Kawato of ATR in Japan. Professor Burdet’s group uses an integrative approach of neuroscience and robotics to: i) investigate human motor control, and ii) design efficient systems for training and rehabilitation, which are tested in clinical trials and commercialised.

Interaction control: in human, for robots

How do we interact with unknown environments and with other humans? By investigating how humans adapt to novel dynamics, we could elucidate how humans learn to carry unstable tasks typical of tool use, and how they learn to coordinate muscle appropriately through practice. The first part of this talk will review these results, and show how this lead to modelling human motor adaptation, as well as to a new robot behaviour bringing flexibility to the control of interactive tasks. To understand how robots could interact with humans we investigated collaborative motor tasks between humans, using dual robotic interface that enable us to modulate the interaction between the partners. The second part of the presentation will describe some of the surprising results elucidating involuntary coordination patterns between humans. Embodying a model of the underlying control mechanism yield a robot partner providing similar assistance benefits as a human partner.

Professor, Department of Manufacturing Engineering and Management
De La Salle University, Philippines

Introduction to Speaker

Dr. Elmer P. Dadios, or “Elmer” to colleagues and friends, is a consultant on software and hardware development in the area of robotics and intelligent systems application. His research interests include: artificial intelligence, evolutionary systems, fuzzy logic, manufacturing processes, neural networks, robotics, software engineering, automation and intelligent systems.

He joined DLSU in September 1996 as an Associate Professor. In May 2008, Elmer was conferred the title of University Fellow, the highest award and recognition given by DLSU to faculty members who exhibit consistent scholarly pursuit through research and publication, effective teaching performance, and exemplary modeling of the Lasallian core values.

A multi-awarded educator and scholar, Elmer has earned over 20 recognitions and distinctions from various national scientific award-giving bodies and professional organizations. Among the more recent major awards he garnered include: Achievement Award from the National Research Council of the Philippines (NRCP), and an Outstanding Scientific Paper Award for his “Analysis of Colonic Histopathological Images Using Pixel Intensities and Hough Transform” from the National Academy of Science and Technology (NAST) both in 2011. The dissertation entitled “Identifying Mass Center for Mass, and Moment of Inertia through Natural Oscillations for Full-Dynamics Control of Robot Manipulators” whose proponents he mentored, won First Prize in the 2011 Department of Science and Technology–Philippine Council for Advanced Science and Technology Research and Development (DOST-PCASTRD) Search for Outstanding Dissertation in the Microelectronics/Mechatronics for Advance Science and Technology Category. Elmer was also a recipient of the Department of Science and Technology (DOST) 50 Men and Women of Science and Technology (2009); The Department of Science and Technology (DOST) Scholar Achievers (2009).

Elmer has been very visible in both the local and international milieu, not only by attending conferences but also in sharing his expertise with colleagues and other institutions. Currently, he serves as editor of the Journal of Advanced Computational Intelligence and Intelligent Informatics (JACIII) published by the Fuji Technology Press, Ltd. (Tokyo, Japan); editor in chief of the Journal of Computational Innovations and Engineering Application (JCIEA) published by DLSU Publishing House, editorial board member of the International Journal of Advanced Robotic Systems, InTech Open Access Publisher; He is very active in the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineering (IEEE) professional organization. He is currently a member of the IEEE Asia and Pacific (R10) Executive Committee. He is the chair of the IEEE R10 Awards and Recognition Committee; He is the chair of the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society Philippines Chapter; At the national level, Elmer is the president of NERONEMECH Incorporation; Founder and past president of the Mechatronics and Robotics Society of the Philippines.

Elmer has also served in varying capacities in the past as an external assessor for the University of Malaya (Malaysia) from 2011 to 2014; book editor for InTech Open Access Publisher (Croatia); and head trainer of the Philippine Team for the FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) that was held in the US, which won the Rookie All-Star and Highest Rookie Seed Award that qualified the team to participate in the FRC Championship in Atlanta, Georgia, USA.

Elmer is a prolific writer and researcher. He has undertaken over 40 projects as of 2015 and has authored/co-authored over 40 scientific and technical books with InTech (Croatia), and journal articles that were published in several highly reputable local and international journals, which include the: IEEE Transactions on Systems Man and Cybernetics, Journal of Advanced Computational Intelligence and Intelligent Informatics (Fuji Technology Press); On top of these, Elmer has presented and published over 230 papers on topics focusing on his areas of interests in numerous conferences, symposia and workshops held in the country and abroad.

Elmer earned his Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from the Mindanao State University in Marawi City, Philippines; and his Master of Science in Computer Science from De La Salle University. He holds a PhD from the Manufacturing Engineering, Loughborough University, United Kingdom.

Swarm Behavior for Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

Swarm robotics is an approach for the coordination of large numbers of relatively simple robots. A single robot’s capability is limited in terms of sensing, computation, and communication but, using a swarm robotic system, its behavior can be designed in such a way that a global behavior emerges from the local interactions among robots and between the robot and its environment. Swarm unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) is an interesting research nowadays. When robots are flying in the environment to do a specific task, they oftentimes encounter dynamic and static obstacles. This presentation shows the development of swarm algorithms for unmanned aerial vehicles and other types of mobile robot navigations. The robots SWARM behaviors are implemented and tested through computer simulations and in a real physical environment.

Assistant Professor
Institute for Systems and Robotics (ISR), Lisbon, Portugal

Introduction to Speaker

João Silva Sequeira received the PhD degree in ECE in 1999 from Instituto Superior Técnico (IST), Lisbon, Portugal. His currently assistant professor at IST and a researcher at the Institute for Systems and Robotics (ISR), Lisbon, Portugal. He participated in multiple national and international Robotics projects and holds two patents in applied robotics. He coordinated the IST participation in the European FP6 project URUS and was general coordinator of the European FP7 project MOnarCH on Social Robotics. Published several papers in international conferences and journals. His current research interests include social robotics, decision making under uncertainty, and networked robotics systems.

Challenges in Social Robotics for Healthcare

The current trend on the use of social robots for healthcare purposes is generating challenges at multiple levels, namely, on the use of natural interfaces, e.g., natural language and tactile, and on synthetic intelligence embeddings.In addition, ethical challenges are also becoming highly relevant, namely in healthcare applications. The talk addresses some of the aforemetioned challenges based on the experience obtained from an ongoing long run experiment with a social robot in a hospital environment. This experiment, a sequel of the European Project MOnarCH for edutainment activities with children in the hospital, is assessing technologies and concepts in social robotics.

Senior Lecturer, EUREKA Robotics Lab Founder
Cardiff School of Technologies, Cardiff Metropoliton University

Introduction to Speaker

Esyin is the founder of the EUREKA Robotics Lab at Cardiff School of Technology, Cardiff Metropolitan University, who has led a few government, universities and industrial funded projects from EU, Australia, Malaysia and UK. She is a creative academic developing humanoid robot and mobile programs for seamless assessment and feedback with impact case studies that attracted national oppress and media. Esyin provides consultancy and training workshops such as service robots for tourism, healthcare and education with data analytics capabilities, data harvesting and visualization, personal response systems and Turnitin/GradeMark. She facilitated institutional blended learning implementation, staff development and Technology Enhanced Learning best practices/policy development. Esyin is invited as a reviewer for various indexed journals and speaker for international conferences in the related field. Prior to her academic career, Esyin was a software engineer.

In Love and War with Service Robots: the Passionate Deployment, Challenges and National Policy Implications

The presentation lays a disparity discussion for the key debates of two camps in robotics and machines intelligence for industrialization 4.0. Disseminating the deployment of service robots in two national venues in Wales, the interactive model and lessons learnt can be of reference to other human-robot interaction and social intelligence researchers and practitioners. The findings of the deployment blended with the author’s contribution to the AI Select Committee’s publications at the UK Parliament, leading to the practical recommendation to the government and policymakers for a national policy implication.

Chief Executive Officer (CEO)
Robopreneur Sdn Bhd.

Introduction to Speaker

Dr. Hanafiah Yussof graduated from Iwate University Japan in 1998 in Mechanical Engineering, and started his career as Engineer at the Research & Design unit, Sharp Electronics Malaysia. After 3 years, Dr. Hanafiah pursued his interest in robotics. He continued his Masters study at Yamagata University Japan, with research focusing on humanoid robots and further incorporated sensor application in robots during his PhD at Nagoya University until 2008. He continued as JSPS Postdoctoral researcher in Nagoya University and completed his Postdoctoral research in 2010, which focused on development of optical 3-axis tactile sensor for application in humanoid robot.

Dr. Hanafiah is currently the CEO of Robopreneur Sdn Bhd, and holding a post as an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Universiti Teknology MARA. He is also the Visiting Professor in University of Toyama, Visiting Researcher in Nagoya University and Hosei University Japan.

His achievement and recognition in the area of robotics is nothing shy of exceptional. He has won several academic and research awards including more than 8 Best Paper Awards at various international conferences. In 2010, the American Society of Mechanical Engineering (ASME) Dynamic Systems and Control Division (DSCD) awarded Dr Hanafiah with the Best Paper Award in Mechatronics. In 2016, he was awarded the Best Researcher Award by UiTM.

Dr. Hanafiah was the past Chairman of IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (RAS) Malaysia Chapter from 2013 until 2015. He also the founder and heads the Center of Excellence for Humanoid Robotics and Bio-Sensing (HuRoBs), and Head of Business Unit in the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, UiTM. He has received more than RM6 million research grants in UiTM, including for his research on application of humanoid robot for children with autism. His had also served as an editor in several high-impact international journals, and founder of IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Intelligent Sensors (IRIS) and International Robot PRIDE competition.

The Next Big Things in Robotics Business: Service Robotics

The service robotics industry is emerging. Categorized into personal/domestic use and professional use, high growth is expected in service robotics due to technological advancements and growing adoption in diverse industries. From the total market size in global robotics technology market to reach USD82.7Billion by year 2010, the service robotics annual growth is expected to reach up to 25% compared to 15% for industrial robotics. In parallel with the active development in Artificial Intelligent and Machine Learning, we will soon be seeing robots of all shapes and sizes making their first forays into our everyday lives. Not many local Malaysian robotics company focusing on service robotics business and development. We should creating values in the robotic business ecosystem focusing on education, healthcare and hospitality.