Intended special sessions

The purpose of the session is to present recent developments in both, theory and applications, of geometric methods in nonlinear control. Methods of differential geometry, starting in the 70’s of last century from pioneering works of Brockett, Sussmann, Krener, Isidori, and many others, have proved to be very useful in studying and solving various problems of nonlinear control, like controllability, observability, realization, stabilization, linearization and many others. The strenght of geometric methods is two-fold. First, they provide solutions for classes of systems rather than for particular models thus giving general results. Second, geometric solutions are presented in terms of structures that are invariantly related to systems and their classes and therefore do not depend on particular coordinates in which the system is represented. That general and invariant character allows geometric methods to be applied in various areas: robotics, mechanical systems, in particular, systems subject to nonholonomic constraints, quantum systems, biological systems etc. Results presented in the session treat various classes of nonlinear systems and provide results that are both theoretical and applied. Among subjects presented in the session are:

• geometric methods applied to robotics
• various classes of nonlinear systems (control-affine, control linear, positive, systems on time- scales etc.)
• mechanical control systems
• approximation and mappability of nonlinear systems - stability and stabilizability of nonlinear systems

Professor Witold Respondek was born in Poland. He received his Ph.D. degree from the Institute of Mathematics, Polish Academy of Sciences in 1981. He has had positions at the Technical University of Warsaw and at the Polish Academy of Sciences. Since 1994 he has been a professor of applied mathematics at the INSA de Rouen, Normandie University, France. General areas of his scientific interest are geometric methods in systems and control theory as well as geometric methods in differential equations. His research papers have been devoted to problems of linearization of nonlinear control systems, nonlinear observers, classification of control systems and vector distributions, dynamic feedback, applications of high-gain feedback to nonlinear systems, and systems invariant on cones. Recently he has been working on mechanical control systems and on flatness, with particular emphasis on systems with nonholonomic constraints, and on geometry of optimal control problems. He has been an associated editor of SIAM Journal on Control and Optimization, Applicationes Mathematicae, Central European Journal of Mathematics, and Journal of Geometric Mechanics. He is an editor of six books and author or co-author of more than 100 journal and conference papers.

Process identification is a generalised measurement technique, providing hardware and software necessary to transform raw measurement data into a mathematical model being a comprehensive description of plant or signal properties. Identification methods are widely used in many areas of science and industry. Adaptive control is closely related to process identification. The aim of this session is to exchange experience in contemporary linear and nonlinear process identification methods and adaptive control of such plants with focus on practical applications.

Professor Jarosław Figwer is an employee of The Institute of Automatic Control, Silesian University of Technology, Gliwice, Poland. His research interest is in: computer aided process and signal identification; theory and applications of multisine signals in system identification, random process simulation, generation of random numbers and cryptography; applications of system identification and adaptive control in active noise control; nonlinear system modelling; deterministic chaos in adaptive active noise control systems and synthesis of local and distributed random fields with predefined frequency properties.

In recent years, computer vision has become one of the fastest-growing interdisciplinary research areas, combining the latest advancements in computer science with emerging new applications in modern automation and robotics, mechatronics, biomedical engineering, ITS solutions, and automotive systems. In connection with the dynamic development of artificial intelligence, in particular, deep learning, innovative applications of image analysis have emerged that allow obtaining real-time knowledge from vision information.

One of the challenges, of particular importance in automation, robotics and human-machine interaction systems based on computer vision, is to develop reliable techniques for analyzing natural images, especially images acquired in difficult lighting conditions, characterized by low quality and uneven illumination. Another problem specific for industrial applications, especially for the deep learning algorithms, is the shortage of sufficient image data necessary to successfully train deep neural networks, which results in the need to search for solutions based on handcrafted features.

Having in mind the above mentioned challenges, the primary goal of this session is to present the latest achievements in the field of computer vision with the focus on its industrial applications. Of particular interest are applications in automation and robotics systems. However, the session also aims at integrating research teams working in the field of IT, automation, and robotics.

Dr. Krzysztof Okarma, Ph.D., D.Sc. is an Associate Professor at the West Pomeranian University of Technology in Szczecin. He received his master of engineering degrees in electronics and telecommunication (1999) and computer science (2001), doctoral degree in electrical engineering (2003) and habilitation degree (2013) in automation and robotics from his home university. His scientific interests focus on computer vision and image analysis, image processing and machine vision in automation and robotics, particularly objective image quality assessment methods. He is an author or co-author of over 200 journal and conference papers. Since 2016 he has been the Head of Department of Signal Processing and Multimedia Engineering and the Dean of Faculty of Electrical Engineering (Vice-Dean from 2010 to 2016) at the West Pomeranian University of Technology in Szczecin. He is also the chairman of the Board of Control of the Association for Image Processing, the vice-chairman of the Commission of Computer Science and Automatic Control of the Polish Academy of Sciences (PAS) Poznań Branch, and a member of scientific boards of two JCR journals and several international conferences.

Dr. Anna Fabijańska, Ph.D., D.Sc. is an Associate Professor in computer science at the Institute of Applied Computer Science of the Lodz University of Technology. She received her master of engineering degree (2006), doctoral degree (2007) and habilitation degree (2013) in computer science from the Faculty of Electrical, Electronic, Computer and Control Engineering of the Lodz University of Technology. She also gained her scientific experience abroad at the University of Kent (UK), Claude Bernard University Lyon 1 (France) and University of Clermont Auvergne (France). Her scientific interests focus on digital image processing and analysis, machine vision and artificial intelligence (especially deep learning). In particular, they concern the development of the dedicated image processing pipelines for computer-aided diagnosis systems and applications of computer vision in various fields of science and industry. She has authored/co-authored over 100 scientific papers. She was a beneficiary of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education fellowship for outstanding young scientists in the years 2013-2015, a beneficiary of the Foundation for Polish Science (FNP) START fellowship in 2011 and the leader of scientific grants including the project within the framework of the Iuventus Plus programme in the years 2013-2015. Since 2016 she has been a member of The Polish Young Academy of the Polish Academy of Sciences and a member of the Committee on Informatics of the Polish Academy of Sciences.

Non-integer order calculus is a generalization of the classic calculus. It allows to generalize the classical derivative or integeration of integer order to real numbers. Results presented by many Authors show that the use of fractional order (FO) controller allows to obtain the better control quality than use of analogous integer order one.

However it can be noted that not all fundamental properties of integer order systems can be directly mapped to non-integer order case. This implies that many important control problems is waiting for solving. For example stability conditions for FO systems differ from known conditions for integer order systems. Next, the full analog of Nyquist criterion for FO systems does not exist. Area of another important investigations is the interval analysis of FO systems or proposing effective tuning methods for FO controllers.

An another crucial problem is practical implementation of results following from application in control of fractional calculus. Here numerically effective algorithms as well as examples of industrial implementation of FO algorithms are still waiting for presenting.

The goal of this session is to present recent results from area of application the fractional calculus in control as well practical implementations of fractional control.

Dr hab. inż. Krzysztof Oprzędkiewicz, prof. AGH works in the Department of Automatic Control and Robotics at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Automatics, Computer Science and Electronics of the AGH University of Science and Technology in Krakow. For many years he has been dealing with the problems fractional order calculus in controlling and modeling dynamic systems. In the years 2012-2016 he was the deputy dean of the Faculty of EAIiIB AGH, currently he is the deputy head of the Department of Automatic Control and Robotics at the Faculty of EAIiIB AGH.

Dr hab. Ewa Pawłuszewicz, prof. PB worked in the Department of Automatic Control and Robotics transformed from 1/10/2019 into a Robotics and Mechatronics Department at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering of the Bialystok University of Technology. At present, she is the head of this Department. The main topics of scientific work of E. Pawłuszewicz focus on the theory of control of systems of fractional order, control systems with discrete time and control systems on time scales.

This Special Session aims at addressing various aspects related to theoretical, computational, and application-oriented problems in the broad area of motion planning and (feedback) control for mobile robots and intelligent vehicles (MR&IV) working in the ground, underground, aerial, surface, or underwater environments executing various motion/control tasks under practical conditions. The Special Session topic relates to current research and development trends concerning with more and more numerous applications of mobile robots and intelligent vehicles in complex motion tasks executed in the cluttered, often unstructured real environments with limited information, computing power, and supply-energy availability. The topics falling into a range of interest include:

• modeling, identification, and estimation in the area of MR&IV
• computing reference signals for MR&IV
• control design for various motion tasks of MR&IV
• motion strategies addressing state- and input-constraints for MR&IV
• optimal motion/control strategies for MR&IV
• robust control strategies for MR&IV in the presence of motion perturbations and model uncertainties
• motion control strategies for MR&IV with limited sensing/measurement capabilities
• advanced (operator/driver) assistance systems for purposes of navigation and guidance of MR&IV
• new sensory technologies and localization methods for MR&IV
• applications of MR&IV in the industry, agriculture, and transportation areas.

Maciej Marcin Michałek, PhD, DcS, Eng works in the Institute of Automation and Robotics, Poznan University of Technology, Poland; his research interests include modeling, control design and analysis, and control applications in mobile robotics, intelligent ground vehicles, and articulated N-trailer structures.

Dariusz Pazderski, PhD, DcS, Eng works in the Institute of Automation and Robotics, Poznan University of Technology, Poland; his research interests concern nonlinear control methods for motion control of nonholonomic and underactuated systems, and also navigation and motion planning techniques in mobile robotics.

Piotr Skrzypczyński, Prof. of PUT, PhD, DcS, Eng works in the Institute of Robotics and Machine Intelligence, Poznan University of Technology, Poland; his scientific interests include autonomous navigation, simultaneous localization and mapping, motion planning in locomotion tasks, and applications of computational intelligence and machine learning in robotics.

As it is known in control theory, there is a big class of problems (among others, the realization problem, system equivalence, system reducibility, invertibility problem, problem of realizability, synthesis of stabilizing feedback, etc.) that can be solved using various algebraic methods. The algebraic approach is usually a useful, even indispensable part of the design of control systems. It should be noted that from an engineering point of view, the design of control systems cannot be reduced to just the algebraic operations themselves, ignoring other technical aspects (for example, system resistance, computational constraints, constraints resulting from the way the controllers themselves work, and more). In the case of linear systems, the solution to many problems is based on the properties of the transfer function, describing the relationship between the input and output of the given system. In the nonlinear case, this is no longer easy. The obvious way to define transfer function is not clear. Moreover, the input-output behavior of the system is described by a non-linear differential / differential equation. The use of algebraic methods in positive systems, both linear and nonlinear, causes that some properties are significantly simplified compared to classical systems, and in other cases - they are more complicated.

Dr hab. inż. Krzysztof Oprzędkiewicz, prof. AGH work in the Department of Automatic Control and Robotics at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Automatics, Computer Science and Electronics of the AGH University of Science and Technology in Krakow. For many years he has been dealing with the problems fractional order calculus in controlling and modeling dynamic systems. In the years 2012-2016 he was the deputy dean of the Faculty of EAIiIB AGH, currently he is the deputy head of the Department of Automatic Control and Robotics at the Faculty of EAIiIB AGH.

Dr hab. Ewa Pawłuszewicz, prof. PB worked in the Department of Automatic Control and Robotics transformed from 1/10/2019 into a Robotics and Mechatronics Department at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering of the Bialystok University of Technology. At present, she is the head of this Department. The main topics of scientific work of E. Pawłuszewicz focus on the theory of control of systems of fractional order, control systems with discrete time and control systems on time scales.

A number of advanced control algorithms have been developed in recent years. On the one hand, they make it possible to effectively control difficult processes, e.g. nonlinear, multiple-input multiple-output, constrained, time-varying ones. On the other hand, the advanced control algorithms are much more computationally complex than classical methods. Thus, computational aspects and implementation details of such control algorithms are of great importance. Additionally, application reports of advanced control techniques are welcomed, not only typical of industrial process control, but also from the field of embedded systems.

Maciej Ławryńczuk was born in Warsaw, Poland, in 1972. He obtained his M.Sc. in 1998, Ph.D. in 2003, D.Sc. in 2013, in automatic control, from Warsaw University of Technology, Faculty of Electronics and Information Technology. Currently he is employed at the same university at the Institute of Control and Computation Engineering as an associate professor. He is the author or a co-author of 6 books and more than 100 other publications, including more than 30 journal articles. His research interests include: advanced control algorithms, in particular Model Predictive Control (MPC) algorithms, set-point optimization algorithms, soft computing methods, in particular neural networks, modelling and simulation.

To cope with ever growing requirements for control, linear time-varying system approach is used at the model-building stage. The most frequently used class of linear time-varying system is the one of periodic systems. They appear in a natural way in signal processing and communication as, for example, filters which incorporate modulators in the signal path, as well as in control. We also obtain linear time-varying systems when we simplify certain complicated models as it is the case of linearization of nonlinear dynamics around a given trajectory. Further industrial applications of linear time-varying models are modelling current-mode control of a converter, highway vehicles with time-varying velocity and servo system with moving operating point. Finally, we may obtain a linear time-varying model when we apply a time-varying feedback in order to improve control quality to a time-invariant system.

The Special Session topics will cover the following areas:

• modelling and identification of linear time varying systems,
• stability and stabilization,
• controllability and observability,
• numerical characteristics,
• H∞/H2 control,
• optimal control,
• virtual reference feedback tuning,
• applications of linear time-varying systems in automatics, mechatronics, automotive, aerospace, robotics, biological systems, (renewable) energy system.

Artur Babiarz received the MSc. degree in automatic control from Silesian University of Technology, Gliwice, Poland, in 2002. From 2002 to 2006, he was pursuing the Ph.D. degree in automatic control at Faculty of Automatic Control at the Silesian University of Technology. In 2006, he received the Ph.D. degree in automatic control, a specialization in robotics. The habilitation in automatic control he received on July 19, 2016. From 2006, he was Assistant Professor and a member of the Control and Robotics Group at the Institute of Automatic Control at Silesian University of Technology. From 2018, he is Associate Professor at Silesian University of Technology. His research interest includes the robot path planning, mathematical modelling of dynamical systems, fundamental study of switched systems, study the dynamic properties such as controllability and stability of discrete-time fractional order and integer-order dynamical systems.

Specific properties of fractional-order integrals and derivatives/differences lead to the fact that fractional-order models can be more adequate in modeling of selected, complex physical processes. These processes include diffusion phenomena, selected heat exchange systems, processes occurring in some elements of electrical circuits (such as supercapacitors) and many others.
Therefore, in recent years we can observe a significant increase in research interest for this class of systems. However, it is important to note that the incorporation of the fractional-order integrals and derivatives/differences in the model equations results in both a) changes in the elementary properties of this class of models and b) a series of implementation issues for these models.
These specific properties of the fractional-order systems involve reformulations of the stability, controllability and observability criteria for this class of systems. In this area, many problems remain open, especially concerning the so-called noncommensurate fractional-order systems. The main problem related to the implementation issues is determining a time response for fractional-order systems. Note that in the general case, calculation of time responses for integrodifferential equations leads to infinite computational complexity problems. Therefore, determination of time response for fractional-order systems is carried out by the use of finite-length approximators.
Another issue in the area of fractional-order systems is modeling of physical processes using fractional-order models. In this case, one of the crucial problems which does not occur in the 'classical' (integer-order) models is determination of fractional orders of derivatives/differences in the model. Moreover, in practical applications, the orders are often time varying. For example, a fractional order of the supercapacitor model for the charging process is different than that for the discharging one.
The purpose of the proposed special session is to present new results in the field of modeling and analysis of fractional-order systems.

Rafał Stanisławski received his M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering in 2000 and 2005, respectively, and his habilitation degree in control and robotics in 2014 from the Department of Electrical, Control and Computer Engineering, Opole University of Technology, Opole, Poland. He is an Associate Professor and Head of the Department’s Group of Computer-Controlled Systems. His research interests concentrate on modeling, analysis and control of complex dynamic systems, in particular fractional-order systems.

It is expected that Artificial Intelligence (AI) will enable vehicles to reach higher-level autonomous driving capabilities. AI based systems are more than a promising element to address the technical challenges associated nowadays with autonomous vehicles. These challenges include (1) management and processing of humongous amount of data coming from different types of sensors in near-real-time; (2) development of a usable representation of the real-world operating environment to determine and predict further status of the vehicle; (3) making safety critical decisions in an uncertain operating environment; (4) building virtual simulators for test, validation and deep learning purposes; and (5) building a platform for the development of self-learning algorithms. As AI traditionally requires high computation power resources for model training and processing, only optimized solutions with possible implementation on embedded platforms have real potential to enhance the development of higher-level autonomous vehicles. The aim of the session is to address recent advances in so called Embedded Artificial Intelligence (e-AI) that can accelerate industrialization of autonomous driving technologies.

Dr Paweł Skruch and dr Marek Długosz are employees of the Department of Automatic Control and Robotics at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Automatics, Computer Science and Electronics of the AGH University of Science and Technology in Kraków. For many years, their scientific interests have focused around issues related to control for so-called autonomous vehicles. Research and development activities are carried out in the Laboratory of Artificial Intelligence and Autonomous Vehicles and Laboratory of Virtual Validation, which were founded on their initiatives. They also manage the student’s research circle INTEGRA and AGH Duckietown Community Project. In addition, dr Paweł Skruch manages the R&D department at Aptiv Technical Center in Krakow that is responsible for the research, design and development of control algorithms using artificial intelligence and machine learning methods for active safety systems, advanced driver assistance systems and autonomous vehicles.

The proposed session concerns new control algorithms for industrial robots and manipulators mounted on mobile platforms (with or without non-holonomic constraints). The latter are called mobile manipulators and their use in manipulation tasks is becoming wider due to greater versatility than industrial robots resulting from platform mobility. Controlling these objects, however, is more difficult due to the slipping effect (if we allow it) and non-holonomic restrictions in the mobile platform. Interesting are solutions for point-to-point control and trajectory following for the above-mentioned objects. In the case of mobile manipulators, solutions regarding complex kinematics are also interesting. All case studies of specific industrial applications are welcome.

Professor Krzysztof KOZŁOWSKI is the Director of the Institute of Automatic Control and Robotics at the Poznań University of Technology. He is a member of the Central Commission for Titles and Degrees (from December 2015 to December 2020), and a member of the Scientific Council (elected) the Space Research Center of the Polish Academy of Sciences (term of office 2019-2022). He completed scientific internships at the University of California, Los Angeles and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, USA. He was a scholarship holder of the DAAD and the Fulbright Foundation.
The creator of SkyLab, a unique in the country, professional astronomical observatory, the only one at a technical university in Poland, in which the construction of a one-meter telescope with reconfigured optics is currently underway. Manager and PI of over 40 scientific grants. Important research results include new control algorithms for robots such as: inspection robot for large-panel building, mobile robot, robot for heating pipes exploration, mobile robot for open hospital applications, robot for laparoscopy applications and robot for knee rehabilitation. Editor in several international journals (JCR list). Author and co-author of over 300 publications, including over 110 articles in WoS, ORCID id: 0000-0002-6111-3215.

The aim of this special session is to discuss recent progress and achievements related to design, theoretical, computational, and application problems in the broad area of robust control. The special session topic is related to the current research and development trends concerning the continuously increasing use of robust control in real systems, characterized by: modeling uncertainty, external disturbances, variability of the governed plant (in terms of system parameters and/or its structure), or significant sensor noise. The topics of interest of this special issue include, but are not limited to:

• modeling, identification, estimation of system uncertainties/disturbances in the class of robust control schemes
• disturbance observer design and active disturbance rejection control (ADRC) approaches
• robustification of feedback control with conventional, classic control algorithm (like PID)
• robust control for systems with special characteristics (e.g. non-minimum phase, with transport delay, with state- and input-constraints)
• robust control strategies under limited sensing capabilities
• strategies of combining robustness capabilities with adaptability and optimality
• strategies of combining robust control with artificial intelligence (AI)
• applications of robust control in power, process, and motion control
• computational aspects of robust control techniques
• theoretical analysis of robust control methods
• robust control in light of the so-called „Fourth Industrial Revolution” – including Internet-of-Things (IoT), intelligent sensors, Big Data, cloud computing, etc.
• theoretical and practical aspects of fault tolerant control (FTC) and fault estimation

Zhiqiang Gao (z.gao@csuohio.edu) received the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Notre Dame, USA, in 1990. He is an Associate Professor and the Director of the Center for Advanced Control Technologies (https://academic.csuohio.edu/cact), Cleveland State University, USA. His research interests include principles and practice of engineering cybernetics, particularly its manifestation in active disturbance rejection control.

Wojciech Giernacki (wojciech.giernacki@put.poznan.pl) is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Control, Robotics and Information Engineering of the Poznan University of Technology. He founded and heads the PUT AeroLab and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Research Group (http://uav.put.poznan.pl). His scientific interests are focused around the issues of UAVs, especially robust and adaptive control, optimization techniques, as well as data fusion from sensors.

Rafał Madoński, Ph.D., works in the International Energy College as well as in the Energy Electricity Research Center, both operating within Jinan University (China). His research interests are design, analysis, and application of robust control techniques in the process and motion control areas. He is particularly interested in active disturbance rejection-based control (ADRC) methods and their utilization in challenging, industrial control problems.

The purpose of the special session is to discuss new aspects, algorithms and systems related to fault-tolerant control and fault-tolerant design. Modern technological and safety‐critical systems rely on sophisticated design characteristics and control solutions to meet increased performance demands in faulty conditions and in terms of reliability and safety requirements. A conventional feedback control design for a complex system may give unsatisfactory performance or even instability, in the event of malfunctions in actuators, sensors, or other system components. To overcome this limitation, new approaches to general and control system design have been developed in order to tolerate component malfunctions while maintaining desirable stability and performance properties. This feature is particularly important for safety‐critical systems, such as aircraft and spacecraft. In such plants, the consequences of a minor (abrupt or incipient) fault in a system component can be catastrophic. Therefore, the demand on reliability, safety, availability, and fault tolerance is generally high. It is necessary to realize technical systems that are capable of tolerating potential faults in order to improve reliability, safety, and availability while providing desirable performances. The types of control systems are which may achieve this are known as fault‐tolerant control systems and the respective system synthesis as fault-tolerant design. Both approaches intend to increase the ability to accommodate component faults automatically. They are also capable of maintaining overall system stability and acceptable performance in the event of such faults. Sample detailed topics belonging to the scope of the special session are:

• Fault-tolerant control of continuous systems
• Fault-tolerant control of discrete time and discrete event systems
• Virtual sensors for fault-tolerant control
• Application of max-plus algebra for fault-tolerant control
• Fault-tolerant control based on model predictive control and linear parameter varying systems
• Fault-tolerant control of distributed systems and control reconfiguration
• Fault-tolerant design on the functional, physical and geometrical level
• Fault-tolerant design employing the concepts over-actuation, sensor overlap and virtual redundancy
• Machinery health monitoring

Prof. Marcin Witczak, received the M.Sc. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Zielona Góra (Poland), the Ph.D. degree in automatic control and robotics from the Wrocław University of Technology (Poland), and the D.Sc. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Zielona Góra, in 1998, 2002 and 2007, respectively. In 2015 he received a full professorial title. Since then, Marcin Witczak has been a professor of automatic control and robotics at the Institute of Control and Computation Engineering, University of Zielona Góra. His current research interests include computational intelligence, fault detection and isolation (FDI), fault-tolerant control (FTC), as well as experimental design and machinery health monitoring. Marcin Witczak has published more than 200 papers in international journals and conference proceedings. He is an author of 4 monographs and 30 book chapters. Since 2015, he has been a member of the Committee on Automatic Control and Robotics Committee of the Polish Academy of Sciences. As of 2018, he is also an associated editor of ISA Transactions.

Prof. Dr.-Ing Ralf Stetter received the M.Sc. degree in mechanical engineering and the Ph.D. degree in product development from the University of Technology Munich (Germany). He was working at a team coordinator in the development department automotive interiors at Audi AG, Ingolstadt, Germany. He is an employee at the Ravensburg-Weingarten University (RWU) in Weingarten, Germany; his research interests include, among others, the digital product development of transportation systems and the design, analysis and application of control algorithms in the field of autonomous guided vehicles. He is also project leader in the Steinbeis-Transfer-Center “Automotive Systems”.

Topics submitted for the special session concern issues related to the process of increasing the autonomy of marine vessels. Developing guidance, navigation and control systems for autonomous vessels becomes more and more important for maritime operations due to the constant tendency to reduce crew numbers. Furthermore, in the case of underwater vehicles used for pipeline inspection, small intervention works, underwater research, and collection of oceanographic and biological data, the increase in the level of autonomy is of interest to researchers at many leading research centers. For unmanned (or significantly limited crew) vehicles with a high level of autonomy to navigate in surface sea traffic, this requires the development of advanced methods for safe path planning, as well as reliable control systems equipped with appropriate sensors and data processing systems, measuring systems, actuators, and computer algorithms.

Specific topics within the scope of the special session include:

• path planning methods taking into account ship traffic safety;
• modeling, identification and estimation for surface ships and underwater vehicles;
• control design for various watercraft movement tasks;
• allocation methods for propellers mounted in ship hulls;
• controlling modern vessel propulsion systems;
• coordinated control algorithms involving two or more vessels;
• obstacle detection and/or image recognition systems, including vision and sensor systems.

Witold Gierusz, Assoc. Prof. works at Gdynia Maritime University, Department of Ship Automation; his research interests include, among other topics, mathematical modeling of vessel dynamics, allocation systems for propulsion systems, and development of multivariable ship motion control algorithms.

Capt. (Navy) Piotr Szymak, Assoc. Prof. works at Polish Naval Academy, the Institute of Electrical Engineering and Automatics; he is also the national coordinator at the European Defense Agency in the field of marine technologies; the area of his research activities is strictly connected with modeling and control of marine objects, especially unmanned surface and underwater vehicles, recently also including biomimetic underwater vehicles.

Roman Śmierzchalski, Prof. works at Technical University of Gdańsk, Department of Control Engineering; Faculty of Electrical and Control Engineering; his research and interests include control and automation, artificial intelligence, dynamic and multi-objective optimization, decision support systems, safety at sea.

Mirosław Tomera, Assoc. Prof. works at Gdynia Maritime University, Department of Ship Automation; his research fields include modeling, analysis, and application of ship motion control algorithms, in particular those intended for use on unmanned vessels, and estimation of mathematical models of ship dynamics.

Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) integrate physical processes, computational resources, and communication capabilities. This interaction through the different modalities allows developing innovative technologies. Examples of such systems include transportation networks, power generation and distribution networks, water and gas distribution networks, and advanced communication systems. It is worth mentioning that the integration of cyber and physical components increases the systems’ efficiency but at the same time makes them susceptible to hazards e.g. generating in this way concerns about possible cyber-attacks targeting them. Therefore, it leads to new research challenges. There is an on-going trend in industrial control systems to control installations remotely, using sensors and actuators connected with the controller via a wireless network. Added to this, more emphasis is currently placed on the control algorithm itself being located on the computing cloud (control as a service). Such solution, whilst providing undoubtful benefits in terms of cost, flexibility, ease of modifications and maintenance; also poses certain problems which need to be addressed, for instance: resilience of control actions, and security of information flow and information processing. It is important that those problems are fully defined and appropriate benchmarks/ tests scenarios are established for reliable comparison of different proposed solutions of secure and resilient cloud-based control. Whilst there are many cases described in the literature, concerning cloud-based programmable logic controllers for industrial process control, relatively less progress has been made in other areas e.g. remotely controlled robotic devices. In this special session we invite Authors to share their experience with design of such benchmark cases and/or performing tests of the developed algorithms.

Andrew Ordys is currently Professor of Warsaw University of Technology, Faculty of Mechatronics. Previously he worked as Director of Applied Research, acting Vice Dean Academic Affairs at Military Technological College in Sultanate of Oman. He worked in Kingston University (2006-2014), as Professor of Automotive Engineering and Director of Industrial Control Research Group, and, from 2010 Head of School of Mechanical and Automotive Engineering. Before coming to Kingston, Dr Ordys was with the Industrial Control Research Centre in the Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering at the University of Strathclyde, on the Senior Lecturer post funded by the British Energy. Over the whole period of his professional career in Higher Education Dr. Ordys has been actively contributing to the management, research, teaching, and to professional and enterprise related activities. Prof. Ordys’s current research interests include real-time implementation of control algorithms, modelling and verification for automotive systems, non-linear predictive control, control of fast and high-accuracy mechanical systems, and optimal control. He develops theory and algorithms for benchmarking performance of controllers and for the assessment of system's condition.

Jakub Mozaryn received M.Sc. degree in robotics in 2001 and Ph.D. degree in automatic control in 2011 from Warsaw University of Technology, Warsaw, Poland. He works as an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Automation and Robotics at Warsaw University of Technology. Since 2019 he is a member of IEEE. Currently he is research fellow at University of Warwick, UK. His main area of research concerns control systems for nonlinear processes, with particular interests in robotics and cognitive science, robust control design and applications of the artificial neural networks in the areas of the process identification and control.