Maciej M. Michałek received the Ph.D. and D.Sc. (habilitation) degrees in the field of Automation and Robotics from the Poznan University of Technology (PUT), Poland, in years 2006 and 2015, respectively. He is currently an Associate/Academic Professor of PUT in the Institute of Automatic Control and Robotics, where he serves as a deputy director of scientific affairs. His current research interests concern modeling, control design, and control applications in the area of nonholonomic systems, mobile robots, articulated vehicles, N-trailer structures, and intelligent/automated vehicles.
He is a Senior Member of IEEE and the Chair of the Polish Chapter of IEEE Robotics & Automation Society (in cadence 2020-2022). Currently he is a member of the Conference Editorial Board for IEEE Control Systems Society, an Editorial Board Member of the Journal of Intelligent & Robotic Systems, and an Associate Editor for the Journal of the Franklin Institute.
Keynote Speech Title: Modeling and Control of Articulated Vehicles – the Challenge and Beauty
Summary: Recent development trends in the freight and public transportation lead to the so-called Large Capacity Vehicles, which in most practical applications become articulated structures. Maneuvering with multi-articulated vehicles is especially difficult, burdening, and can be even dangerous, also for experienced human-drivers. Although most of the people intuitively agrees with the challenging nature of articulated vehicles, the actual origins of this nature is not so clear for many. During the lecture we will address this problem by explaining and discussing numerous interesting kinematic properties of articulated mobile structures, which all can mix together in a single vehicle making it very difficult to control. On the other hand, such a big difficulty in control observed in so practical problem may be very inspiring and fascinating for control researchers looking for a feedback controller to help the drivers execute agile maneuvers with long articulated vehicles. The second part of the talk will address the control design problem by introducing a cascade-like modular feedback control system, which enables agile automated maneuvering with vehicles comprising an arbitrarily number of segments. We will also show how the cascade-like control system can be modified and applied as a supporting tool for the drivers of electric buses as a part of the advanced driver assistance system (ADAS) to help executing precise maneuvering tasks in the public transportation practice. The lecture will be illustrated by selected simulation and experimental results obtained in a laboratory scale and in the full-scale in-field conditions.