Abstract: Human adaptive mechatronics is intelligent electrical-mechanical systems that are able to adapt themselves to the human’s skill in various environments and providing assistance in improving the skill, and overall operation of the combined human machine system to achieve the improved performance. It is clear that humans have strong and extremely adaptive natural mechanisms that are able to accommodate external environmental disturbances under which internal life cycle operations can still be regulated very effectively. It has been a significant attraction for human beings to apply similar biologically inspired mechanisms to man-made systems such as mechatronically built robots, unmanned air vehicles, airplanes, auto pilot steering systems, engineering ergonomics, and enormous examples encountered in autonomous systems. It aims to study automata from an engineering perspective and to serve the purpose of controlling advanced engineering systems. The improvement in human-machine interfaces has made advanced intelligent machines possible without special education and training.
This talk will introduce the basic concepts of human adaptive mechtronics and the current projects conducted by the members from a recent EPSRC funded network on human adaptive mechatronics.
 

Brief Biography of the Speaker: Prof Hongnian Yu has held academic positions at the Universities of Yanshan, Sussex, Liverpool John Moor, Exeter, Bradford and Staffordshire. He is currently Professor of Computer Science and the head of the Mobile Computing and Distributed control Systems Research Group (http://www.EPSRCHAM.org.uk/MCDS/)) at Staffordshire University. He has extensive research experience in modelling and control of robots and mechatronics devices, and neural networks, mobile computing, modelling, scheduling, planning, and simulations of large discrete event dynamic systems with applications to manufacturing systems, supply chains, transportation networks and computer networks. He has published over 140 journal and conference research papers. He has held several research grants from EPSRC, the Royal Society, and the EU, AWM, as well as from industry. He is leading an EPSRC funded international joint research project: UK-Japan Network on Human Adaptive Mechatronics (EPSRC) www.EPSRCHAM.org.uk. He is a member of EPSRC Peer Review College. He is a Program Co-chair of UKACC 2008 (http://www.control2008.org/), a Program Chair of IEEE Conference on Networking, Sensing and Control in 2007 (http://www.ieee-icnsc07.org/), a General Chair of International conference on Software Knowledge Information Management and Applications in 2006 (http://www.camt.info/skima2006/), and is serving on various other conferences and academic societies. He was awarded the F.C. William Premium for his paper on adaptive and robust control of robot manipulators by the IEE Council in 1997.