Invited speakers
Prof. Ing. Miroslav Fikar, DrSc, STU in Bratislava, Slovakia
Modelling, Control, and Optimisation of Membrane Processes
In this work, we deal with membrane processes which stand for an emerging technology in chemical and bioprocess industry used both in production and down-stream processing. Membrane processes receive growing attention mainly due to reduced energy demands and higher efficiency of the achieved separation or processing goals. These systems, however, did not receive much attention from process optimization community and that is why they provide many opportunities for development of optimal operation design.
We will discuss in details membrane processes, their common features, and principles. We will derive mathematical models suitable for modelling, simulation, and control. The existing industrial operation and control will be explained. Theory of automatic control will be employed to improve the existing state of control and to propose new control strategies. Selected case studies will demonstrate the advantages of the proposed approach.
Prof. Vilém Novák, DSc., University of Ostrava, Czech Republic
On Linguistic Control
This talk is focused on the original idea of fuzzy control - to realize control on the basis of genuine linguistic description of a control strategy provided by human operator. We will discuss a special concept of fuzzy control which differs from the generally used techniques applying Mamdani-Assilian inference based on relational interpretation of fuzzy IF-THEN rules, or Takagi-Sugeno rules. We will call our technique linguistic control.
The leading idea of linguistic control is to "teach" computer to "understand" genuine linguistic description of a control strategy so that the computer is then able to follow it analogously as people do. Our technique applies mathematical theory of the meaning of special expressions of natural language and mathematical theory of formal logical deduction on the basis of (vague) linguistic descriptions. The result is a specific control technique which has several advantages, namely intelligibility, robustness, generality, but also adaptation and learning.
The linguistic control was successfully applied to control of many kinds of systems. In the talk, we will present various simulation examples as well as applications of the linguistic control in practice.
Prof. Dr. Péter Korondi, DSc., Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Hungary
Is it possible for a robot to have emotions?
First part of the presentation is about the general trends in the field of robotics.
According to the report of Japanese Ministry of Economics and Trade the robot industry market will be rearranged dramatically The dominance will be shifted from the classical industrial robots used in the manufacturing sector to the so called service robots, which have already overtaken the leadership in the scientific journals and conferences but his market segment was almost ignorable. It will be increased most rapidly in the near future. This perception shows the increasing trend office, hospital, and similar robots. (In most of the cases these are mobile robots.)
Until now, the ordinary people could see robots only in the TV but there was no real physical contact with them. It means that robots were pure engineering stuff. The engineers used them. Service robots are designed for more sophisticated tasks than other devices, so the robot control method and the artificial intelligence must satisfy the communication tasks at a human-robot interaction. In line with the hardware design, the low level software development this train of thought raises several additional questions like
- How should a social robot look like?
- How should we communicate with the robot?
- Is it possible for a robot to have emotions?
- What is the definition of emotions?
The second part of the presentation is about MOGI Robi, the faithful robot: MOGI Robi is the result of such research, where as a first step in the process, behavioural scientists described dogs attachment patterns to their masters in details. Computer scientists then translated these patterns into algorithms and computer programs, and finally, engineers constructed a robot whose elements of behaviour resemble those shown by dogs. While MOGI Robi does not have emotions, it can act in a way that makes us believe that it is actually fond of us.
