TC 7.5. Intelligent Autonomous Vehicles

Welcome Message from the 2020 - 2023 Chair

(12.12.2020)

I am grateful for being nominated as chairman of TC 7.5. I extend my thanks in particular to Paul G. Plöger – who was formerly chairman and now vice-chairman of this TC – and to his immediate predecessors Ljubo Vlacic and Giovanni Indiveri who presided over the IAV community.

I am also grateful for the opportunity to organize the IAV 2019 symposium in Gdańsk, where we had the opportunity to host a large group of participants from 19 countries representing 80 scientific and industrial institutions (140 scientists and students in the scientific part of the conference and 150 people participating in the IAV Cup, including the Robot Exhibition and the Race Drones).

Furthermore my warm welcome goes to the recent member Libor Preucil from Czech Republic, who will conduct the IAV 2022 event in Prague.

Finally, let me introduce the composition of the TC 7.5 management board, which, according to the current suggestions of IFAC, is structured as follows:

• Chair Zdzislaw KOWALCZUK (kova@pg.edu.pl) from Gdańsk University of Technology
• Vice Chair (Incoming Chair) Libor PREUCIL (libor.preucil@cvut.cz) from Czech Technical University in Prague
• Vice Chair (Symposium Steering Committee) Paul G. PLÖGER (paul.ploeger@h-brs.de) from Bonn-Rhein-Sieg University
• Vice Chair (Publications) Han-Lim CHOI (hanlimc@kaist.ac.kr) from KAIST, Aerospace Engineering
• Vice Chair (Education) Anna WITKOWSKA (anna.witkowska@pg.edu.pl) from Gdańsk University of Technology
• Vice Chair (Social Media) Marek TATARA (martatar@pg.edu.pl) from Gdańsk University of Technology
• Vice Chair (Industry) Lounis ADOUANE (lounis.adouane@hds.utc.fr) from Univ. de Technologie de Compiègne.

I would like to thank all of them for expressing their willingness to help with the activities of our committee.

IAV Activities and scope

In the current state of the art and interests of our TC, some most popular IAV-related areas are: architectures for intelligent autonomous systems (land, marine, aerial and space); smart sensors, networks and sensor integration for autonomous vehicles and robots; navigation, guidance and control, motion control, controller design, stability analysis; fault detection and diagnosis in intelligent autonomous systems; decision making for autonomous driving in real‐time; planning and mission control; multiple vehicle systems and networks of autonomous vehicles; human vehicle interaction; domestic robots, intelligent medical manipulators, service and rehabilitation robots; and various applications of autonomous intelligent vehicles.

Current and Future Activities

The main IFAC event this year was the 21st IFAC World Congress (WC) in Berlin, which, despite the COVID-19 pandemic, was successfully conducted on July 12-17, 2020 (the actual Congress time frame was wider), primarily remotely, on the Zoom platform. 4,235 entries were received, 93 open tracks invited, 77 invited sessions and 34 pre-conference workshops (which is probably a world record). The 39 chairmen of the technical committees and over 340 collaborating editors did a great deal of organizational and review work. Over 32,290 review requests were sent, 23,318 received, and a total of 13,355 reviews were received. A record number of 2,954 articles and extensive summaries were accepted for the final technical program, as well as PDF files with presentation slides and more than 2,900 videos/screencasts (expressed in over 370 GB of data). The virtual track was divided into 263 virtual sessions: 50 invited sessions, 67 open invitation sessions and 2 late results sessions.

With the next congresses in Yokohama '2023 and Busan' 2026, at the beginning of November this year, the new IFAC president prof. Hajime Asama announced a call to nominate candidates to host the IFAC World Congress in 2029.

During the WC, a remote TC board meeting was held (the slides are presented here).

The next most important event for TC 7.5 to come is, of course, our symposium on "Intelligent Autonomous Vehicles" in the summer of 2022. Vice-chairman TC 7.5, Libor Preucil from the Czech Technical University in Prague (Center for Advanced Field Robotics) will be the organizer of the IFAC Intelligent Autonomous Vehicles Symposium on July 6-8 (Wednesday-Friday). I would like to appeal to TC members to seriously think about the success of the symposium by joining its organization.

Here is the current roster of TC 7.5:

Finally, I would like to thank all members for joining the TC and warmly welcome on board the Committee. I also wish you all productive efforts during this term!

Zdzisław Kowalczuk
TC7.5 Chairman
email: kova@pg.edu.pl
IFAC NMO: http://www.konsulting.gda.pl/polspar/
Visit Card: https://pg.edu.pl/9cfdf10e8f_zdzislaw.kowalczuk
TUG: https://eti.pg.edu.pl/en/ksdr-en
Google: https://scholar.google.pl/citations?user=s3Ug1PEAAAAJ&hl=en