Recognition by the international scientific community
Creation and reinforcement
of laboratory infrastructures
Sponsored by
national and international agencies, several projects funded the full
development of autonomous robotics vehicles and tools, instrumental for the
group where I was developing my research activities. Technical details and specs
can be found in Annex C and a description of the underlying projects can be
found in Annex B. The following infrastructures are worth mentioning:
[LI06] Participation in the team that developed a family of instrumented Autonomous Unmanned Helicopters, for
survey of critical infrastructures, with application in the ADI - AIRTICI
project, from 2009-2012.
[LI05] Participation in the team that developed the first Portuguese
civilian Autonomous Underwater Vehicle
(named INFANTE) for environmental
surveys in coastal waters, from 2000-2003.
[LI04] Leader of the team that developed a new Ultra-short Baseline Positioning Systems, able to track
underwater targets (vehicles, humans or tagged animals). Instrumental for the
success of the RUMOS and MAST-AM projects, from 2005-2014.
[LI03] Development of the IRIS
Survey Tool, composed by sonar and laser devices, able to geo-reference
with sub-centimeter error, semi-submerged structures, instrumental on the
success of the project MEDIRES, from 2003-2007.
[LI02] Development of the Autonomous
Surface Crafts DELFIM, DELFIMx and CARAVELA, that made possible the
success of the European ASIMOV project that aimed at the development of
advanced systems for the joint operation of autonomous surface and underwater
vehicles, with applications to the study of hydro-thermal vent activity in the
Azores islands, from 1998‐2000.
[LI01] Participation in the team that developed MARIUS, the first European civilian Autonomous Underwater
Vehicle for environmental surveys in coastal waters, from 1991‐96.
Scientific activity
development
The candidate studied along his academic career dynamical systems
theory and optimization, with applications to land, ocean, and aerospace
robotics as well as localization in sensor networks. He was able to demonstrate
well prooven capabilities to go from concept to practice, effectively mastering
the different steps involved in the design, construction, and operation of
autonomous robots.
Design of Guidance, Navigation, and Control Systems
for autonomous vehicles - Study of advanced
solutions focusing on the: i) development of highly performing, moderate cost
heading and attitude reference units; ii) study and practical evaluation of
acoustics-based systems for underwater vehicle positioning; iii) development of
geophysical-based navigation algorithms; iv) development of advanced
simultaneous localization and mapping algorithms, fusing inertial sensors with
landmark sensor-based observations. Design and development of Autonomous
Underwater Vehicles (AUVs), Autonomous Surface Craft (ASC) and Unmanned Aerial
Vehicles (UAVs) and on-board integration of scientific sensor suites and data
acquisition / logging systems.
Sensor-Based Robotic Vehicle localization and control - Reliable navigation and positioning of uninhabited aerial vehicles
(UAV) are fundamental for any autonomous mission, particularly in unknown
environments where absolute positioning systems are absent or unreliable. The
motivation for this topic arises from the usage of single or multiple autonomous
vehicles for automatic inspection of critical infrastructures and buildings,
such as bridges, electric power lines, dams, construction areas, etc. Near
these structures, the global positioning system (GPS) signal may be unreliable
or completely unavailable, whereas the electromagnetic interference may degrade
any magnetometer measurement to the point of becoming unusable. This research
is specialy important as these dynamically unstable vehicles have to be
controlled as close as possible to the inspection target. The use of aided
navigation techniques resorting to a localization algorithm, aims at solving
this problem in such a way that these sensors are made redundant.
Aided Inertial Navigation Systems - Design
and implementation of inertial navigation systems that must provide, in real
time, accurate estimates of the linear and angular positions, and velocities of
the platforms where they are installed. MEMS are nowadays key technologies to
develop Inertial Navigation Systems for small autonomous platforms because of
their reduced size, cost and power consumption, relative to conventional
devices. This requires an extra effort in the development of online data
acquisition and compensation techniques involving absolute sensors for biases
compensation and platform alignment. The overall goal of this project is
twofold: 1) exploit different absolute sensor characteristics, in their natural
measurement space, a sensor based strategy, using advanced tightly-coupled
architectures to develop MEMS based INS for autonomous platforms; 2) develop
state of the art high accuracy analog to digital interfaces that can minimize
the impact of nonlinearities, bias stability, and temperature drift on the data
acquired. Constraints imposed by the different aiding sensors, like
availability and accuracy, require smooth filter switching techniques between
different INS compensation techniques. This topic involves the cooperation with
Prof. Carlos Silvestre from the Faculty in Sciences and Enginnering of the
University of Macao, Prof. Nicolas Petit from the Centre Automatique et
Systèmes from the Ecole de MINES ParisTech, Paris, France, and Prof. Amit Sanyal
from the Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering College of the New Mexico
University, USA.
Fault Detection and Isolation (FDI) and Fault Tolerant Control (FTC) - Development of theoretically sustainedFault Detection and Isolation
(FDI) and Fault Tolerant Control (FTC) methods using Set-Valued Observers (SVOs),
that take into account model uncertainty, exogenous disturbances, and
measurement noise, with applicability to wind turbines. Previous evaluations
performed indicate that the time required to detect and isolate faults, using
the aforementioned approach, is considerably smaller than the one obtained
using the available alternatives in the literature. Hence, this research topic
pursues novel theoretically sustained FDI and Fault Tolerant Control (FTC)
systems, driven towards fully autonomous operation. The foreseen methods build
on recent advances in model falsification using set-valued observers and on
LPV/BMI controllers for timevarying plants, guaranteeing maximum detection
times for the faults, and ensuring closed-loop stability and performance.
In each one of the above topics several topics
were developed as can be seen in previous sections. Moreover, as detailed in
the section of student guidance and supervision, the candidate has been leading
scientific challenges and coordinating continuous efforts by teams of young
researchers and technicians, with successful scientific and societal results.
Recognition by the international scientific community
Editor of
Scientific Journals
Associate Editor of the Journal
Sensors (ISSN 1424-8220),section “Physical Sensors,” MDPI, Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing
Institute, Basel, Switzerland, June 2018.
Member of International Scientific Organizations
Member of the Programme
Committee of the International Council of the Aeronautical Sciences
(ICAS), May 2020. Member of the Technical Committee on
Marine Systems (7.2) of the International Federation of Automatic
Control (IFAC), term 2017-2020, April 2018.
Member of the IFAC
Technical Committee on Computational Intelligence in Control (3.2),
term 2017-2020, November 2017.
Member of the IFAC
Technical Committee on Aerospace (7.3), term 2017-2020, November 2017.
Member
of the IFAC Technical Committee Intelligent Autonomous Systems (7.5), term
2017-2020, October 2017.
Corresponding Member of
the IFAC Technical Committee Non-Linear Control Systems (2.3), term
2017-2020, October 2017.
Awards and distinctions
·Portuguese Society of Robotics Award for the Best PhD Thesis
in Robotics 2019,entitled ‘‘Globally
Convergent Simultaneous Localization and Mapping: Design Techniques, Analysis,
and Implementation,” by
Doutor Pedro António Duarte Marques Lourenço, that I co-supervised, April 2020.
·Portuguese
Society of Robotics Award for Best MSc Thesis in Robotics
2016, entitled “CPG and
Tegotae-based Locomotion Control of Quadrupedal Modular Robots,”by
Rui Vasconcelos, that I co-supervised, April 2017.
·Portuguese Society of Robotics Award for the Best PhD Thesis
in Robotics 2015, entitled ”Monocular 3D Positioning and Tracking Systems,” by
Doutor Tiago Gaspar, that I
supervised, April 2016.
·IBM Portugal Scientific
Prize 2012 for the work
entitled “Algoritmos robustos de localização em redes de sensores com aplicações
a seguimento de alvos,” by Pinar
Oguz Ekim, that I co-supervised,
May 2013.
·Portuguese Society of Robotics Award for the Best PhD Thesis
in Robotics 2011,entitled ‘‘Advanced
Ultra-Short Baseline Inertial Navigation Systems,” by Doutor Marco Morgado, that
I co-supervised, April 2012.
·Portuguese Society of Robotics Award for the Best MSc Thesis
in Robotics 2010,entitled ‘‘Sistemas de Navegação para Formações
Auxiliada por Sensores Locais,” by Doutor Pedro Batista, that I co-supervised, April 2011.
·Best Student Paper Award in the 8th IFAC Conference on
Manoeuvring and Control of Marine Craft–MCMC 2009, Guarujá, Brasil, for
Eng. Marco Morgado, that I co-supervised,
for the paper entitled ‘‘Posterior
Cramér-Rao bounds analysis for INS/USBL navigation systems,” September 2009.
·Scholarship by the Luso-Indian Cooperation Protocol, sponsored by the Gabinete para as Relações Internacionais –
GRICES, of the Ministério para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, for a visit to the National Institute of
Oceanography - NIO, Dona Paula, Goa, Índia, February 2001.
·Scholarship by the OTAN-INVOTAN 11/A/94/PO for a stay at the Naval Postgraduate School of Monterey (NPS),
United States of America, with the workplan entitled ‘Sistemas de
Navegação para a Cooperação de veículos Submarinos Autonomos’‘, under the
coordination of Prof. António Pascoal (IST) and Prof. Isaac Kaminer (NPS), from
June to September 1995.
·Scholarship by the European Community project ESPRIT II #2192, ‘‘AIMBURN – Advanced
Multi-Sensor System for Control of Boilers and Furnaces,’‘ under the
supervision of Prof. João Sentieiro, branch 7 of the Centro de Análise e
Processamento de Sinais, from October 1990 until March 1991.
·Scholarship nº 295/87 from the Programa Mobilizador de Ciência e Tecnologia
of the Junta Nacional para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, with the workplan entitled
‘‘Controlo Inteligente,’‘ from
September 1987 until September 1990.
·Scholarship from the Fundação Luso-Americana to presente the paper entitled ‘‘Fuzzy Supervision of Direct Controllers,’‘
in the 5th IEEE Conference on Intelligent Control, Philadélphia, USA,
September 1990.
·Scholarship from the European Community project ESPRIT II #2192, ‘‘AIMBURN – Advanced
Multi-Sensor System for Control of Boilers and Furnaces,’‘ to a stay at
the Imperial College of Science, Technology, and Medicine de Londres (IC), UK, with
the workplan entitled “Optimization
Strategies for the Controlo of a Glass Furnace,’‘ under the
supervisiono of Prof. João Sentieiro (CAPS/IST) and Dr. E. D. Farmer (IC/UK), from
June 1990 until August 1990.
·Interchange Program COMMET Scholarship for an
internship at the Departamento de Automática of the Universidade Politécnica de
Madrid, with the workplan entitled ‘‘Applications
of Fuzzy Control to the Cement Industry,’‘ from September until
December 1990.
·Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian Scholarship of Excelence, from 1980 until
1987.
Scientific Evaluator for International Research
Institutions
[IPE04]
Project Evaluator for the National Center of Science and Technology
Evaluation, Ministry of Education and Science, Republic of Kazakhstan,
December 2018.
[IPE03]
Project Evaluator for the National Center of Science and Technology
Evaluation, Ministry of Education and Science, Republic of Kazakhstan,
November 2017.
[IPE02]
Project Evaluator for the National Center of Science and Technology
Evaluation, Ministry of Education and Science, Republic of Kazakhstan,
December 2016.
[IPE01]
Project Evaluator for the National Center of Science and Technology
Evaluation, Ministry of Education and Science, Republic of Kazakhstan,
September 2014.
Organization of
International Scientific Events
General Chair of the 2018 IEEE International Conference on Autonomous
Robot Systems and Competitions (ICARSC),” Torres Vedras,Portugal, April 2018, with the participation of 100 teams and 66
researchers.
Member of the Organizing Committee of the Workshop on EU Funded Marine Robotics and
Applications,IST, June
2015, with the participation of 100 researchers.
Chair of the National Committee of the 7th IFAC Conference on
Manoeuvering and Control of Marine Craft - MCMC, IST, September 2006,
with the participation of 120 researchers.
Local Arrangements Chair of the ROBOCUP 2004, Lisbon, June 2004, with the
participation of 2000 participants.
Organizing Committees of International Scientific
Events
·Member of theInternational
Program Committee of the 14th International Conference on
Automatic Control and Soft Computing (Controlo 2020), Bragança, Portugal, July 2020.
·Member of the International Program Committee of the 5th
IFAC International Conference on Intelligent Control and Automation Sciences
(ICONS 2019), Belfast, Northern Ireland, August 2019.
·Member of the International Program Committee of the 10th
IFAC Symposium on Intelligent Autonomous Vehicles (IAV 2019), Gdansk,
Poland, July 2019.
·Member of the Technical Program Committee (TPC) of the IEEE
International Conference on Autonomous Robot Systems and Competitions (ICARSC)
‘‘ROBOTICA2019,” Vila Nova de Gaia, Portugal, April 2019.
·Member of theInternational
Program Committee of the 13th International Conference on
Automatic Control and Soft Computing (Controlo 2018), Ponta Delgada, Portugal, June 2018.
·Member of the International Program Committee of the ROBOT2017
- Third Iberian Robotics Conference, Seville, Spain, November 2017.
·Member of the International Program Committee do 3rdConference on Geometric Science of
Information, Paris, France, November 2017.
·Associate Editor in the 2016 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on
Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), Daejeon, Coreia, October 2016.
·Member of theInternational
Program Committee of the 12th Portuguese Conference on
Automatic Control (Controlo 2016), Guimarães, Portugal, September 2016.
·Member of the International Program Committee (Associate Editor) do 9th
IFAC Symposium on Intelligent Autonomous Vehicles (IAV 2016), Leipzig,
Germany, June 2016.
·Associate Editor in the 2015 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on
Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), Hamburgo, Alemanha, September
-October 2015.
·Member of the Technical Program Committee of the EU funded Marine
Robotics and Applications (EMRA´15) Workshop, IST, June 2015.
·Member of the Technical Program Committee (TPC) of the IEEE
International Conference on Autonomous Robot Systems and Competitions (ICARSC)
‘‘ROBOTICA2015,” Vila Real, Portugal, April 2015.
·Member of the International Program Committee of the IFAC
Workshop on Navigation, Guidance and Control of Underwater Vehicles
(NGCUV”2015), Girona, Espanha, 2015.
·Associate Editor in the IEEE 2015 International Conference on
Robotics and Automation, Washington, USA, May 2015.
• Member of the Technical Program Committee (TPC) of
the IEEE International Conference on Autonomous Robot Systems and
Competitions (ICARSC) ‘‘ROBOTICA2014,” Espinho, Portugal, May 2014.
·Member of theInternational
Program Committee of the 11th Portuguese Conference on
Automatic Control (Controlo 2014), Porto, Portugal, July 2014.
·Member of the International Program Committee (Associate Editor) of the 8th
IFAC Symposium on Intelligent Autonomous Vehicles, Brisbane, Australia,
26-38 June 2013.
·Member of the International Program Committee of the IEEE Symposium
on Industrial Electronics & Applications - ISIEA 2012, Bandung,
Indonesia, 2012.
·Member of the International Program Committee of the IFAC
Workshop on Navigation, Guidance and Control of Underwater Vehicles
(NGCUV”2012), Porto, 2012.
·Member of the Technical Program Committee (TPC) of the 19th European Signal Processing Conference -
EUSIPCO 2011, Barcelona,
Espanha, August 2011.
·Member of the Technical Program Committee (TPC) of the 18th European Signal Processing Conference - EUSIPCO 2010, Aalborg, Dinamarca,
2010.
·Member of the Technical Program Committee (TPC) of the 7th IFAC Symposium on Intelligent
Autonomous Vehicles - IAV2010, Lecce,
Itália, 6-8 September 2010.
·Member of the Technical Program Committee (TPC) of the 17th European Signal Processing Conference - EUSIPCO 2009, Glasgow, Escócia,
24-28 August 2009.
·Member of the Technical Program Committee (TPC) of the8th
IFAC Conference on Manoeuvering and Control of Marine Craft – MCMC2009,
Guarujá, Brazil, September 2009.
Reviewer of
Scientific Book for International Editors
·Elsevier - February 2014, December
2018.
Reviewer for
International Scientific Journals
List of journals where the candidate
completed paper reviews. A date is the end of the review process for each
paper.
·Elsevier
Sensors & Actuators – A. Physical – September 2019.
·Elsevier
Robotics and
Autonomous Systems
– May 2017.
·SAGE International Journal of Advanced Robotic Systems
– October 2018.
·IEEE Transactions on Intelligent
Vehicles – January 2018,
May 2018.
·Elsevier
Control Engineering Practice – May 2017.
·Springer Multibody System Dynamics –
January 2017.
·Elsevier Applied Ocean Research – July 2015.
·IEEE Sensors Journal – April 2015.
·Elsevier Mechanical Engineering and
Signal Processing - April 2015.
·IEEE Transactions on Aerospace and Electronic Systems
- March 2015,
September 2015, October 2015, May 2020.
·Elsevier Automatica - August 2014,
December 2016.
·Springer Journal of Aerospace Engineering - April 2014.
·Springer Journal of Intelligent Robotic Systems - July 2011,
August 2014.
·Springer Intelligent Service Robotics - May 2011.
·Taylor and Francis International Journal of Systems
Science - Januray, and September 2011.
·Elsevier Aerospace Science and Technology - December 2010, July 2015, Dezember 2016.
·Elsevier
Signal Processing - December 2015 and May 2017.
·Kluwer Autonomous Robots - May 2010, March 2011.
·IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control - December 2009, January 2010, June 2010, April 2015,November 2016.
·IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing - November 2009, July 2010.
·Advanced Robotics, The Official International Journal
of the Robotics Society of Japan - February 2009.
·Elsevier Mathematics and Computers in Simulation - March 2008, April 2011, March 2014, February 2015,
July 2015.
·Elsevier Ocean Engineering - September 2007.
·IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics - April 2007, November 2008, February 2009, March 2010,
May 2010, January 2011, November 2014, and December 2014.
·IEEE Transactions on Robotics - December 2006, May 2008, June 2011.
·IEEE Transactions of Oceanic Engineering - November 2005, April 2006, March 2008, April 2008,
April 2009.
·IEEE Transactions in Control Systems Technology - September 2004, August 2008, August 2014, May 2015,
and November 2015.
·IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems - December 2001.
·Journal of Marine Science and
Application – January 2017.
·Springer
Structural and Multidisciplinary Optimization, April 2017.
·IEEE Transactions in Wireless Communicatyions –
October 2017.
·Wiley Asian Journal of Control,
January 2019.
Reviewer for
International Scientific Events
List of international
conferences where the candidate completed paper reviews. Multiple years at the
end of the event corresponds to several years where review processes were
completed.
·The 2020 International Conference on Unmanned Aircraft
Systems - ICUAS'20, June 2020, Greece.
·IFAC 5th International Conference on Intelligent
Control and Automation Sciences, Belfast, United Kingdom, 2019.
·IFAC 12th IFAC Symposium on Robot Control, Budapest, Hungary, 2018.
·IFAC Workshop on Navigation, Guidance and Control of
Underwater Vehicles NGCUV”2015”, Girona, Espanha, 2015.
·2014 IEEE Intelligent Vehicles Symposium - March 2014.
·8th IFAC Symposium on Nonlinear Control Systems -
NOLCOS - 2010.
·19th International Symposium on Mathematical Theory of
Networks and Systems (MTNS 2010) - 2010.
·American Control Conference – ACC - 2010,
2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2018.
·Asian Control Conference 2009, Xangai - 2009.
·European Signal Processing Conference - EUSIPCO -
2009, 2010, and 2011.
·IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory,
Seul, Coreia - 2009.
·IEEE Multiconference on Systems and Control, San
Petersburg, Russia - 2009.
·IEEE International Conference on Robotics and
Automation - ICRA - 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2013, 2014, 2015, and 2019.
·IEEE Control and Decision Conference - CDC - 2004,
2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2014, 2015, and 2017.
·European Control Conference - ECC - 2005, 2006, 2007,
2011, and 2015.
·Iberian Conference on Pattern Recognition and Image
Analysis - 2005, and 2007.
·IFAC World Congress - 2005, 2008, 2011, 2014, and 2017.
·IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Inteligent Robots
and Systems-IROS - 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, and
2014.
·IEEE Conference on Control Applications/ International
Symposium on Intelligent Control/ Symposium on Computer-Aided Control Systems
Design - CCA/ISIC/CACSD - 2004.
