Lucia Pallottino

MESAS'17 GENERAL CHAIR
Lucia Pallottino is currently Assistant Professor at the Centro "E. Piaggio" and the Dipartimento di Ingegneria dell'Informazione at the University of Pisa. She received the "Laurea" degree in Math from the Department of Mathematics in the University of Pisa in 1998.
She got a Doctoral degree in Robotics and Industrial Automation at Centro "E. Piaggio" at the faculty of Engineering, in January 2002.
She has been Visiting Scholar at M.I.T. (2000-2001) in the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems (LIDS ).
She has been Visiting Researcher at UCLA, (2004) in the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department (MAE ).
She is Vice-Chair of the IEEE Robotics & Automation Society Italian Chapter (I-RAS). Her main research interests within Robotics are in motion planning and control for nonholonomic vehicles, optimal control of constrained systems, distributed control of multi–robot vehicles and quantised control.
She has published more than 40 papers in International Journal and Conferences (Google scholar h–index=12).
She has served IEEE (CASE, ICRA, IVS, IROS, ARMS, IRAM, SAC) as a Program Committee member and was a co-chair of the Technical Program Committee of CONET2012 workshop. She has also been external Reviewer for research projects for the: Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) in the Computer Sciences and Engineering field, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) for “Discovery Grant” research projects and the Fund for Scientific Research (F.R.S.-FNRS) in Brussels.
She is member of the Editorial Board of the International Journal of Advanced Robotic Systems. Receipient of the "IEEE-RAS Italian Chapter Young Author Best Paper Award 2009" for the paper: L. Pallottino, V.G. Scordio, A. Bicchi, E. Frazzoli, "Decentralized cooperative policy for conflict resolution in multivehicle systems," on IEEE Transactions on Robotics, 23 (6):1170-1183, 2007.

Antonio BICCHI

MESAS'17 TECHNICAL PROGRAM COMMITTEE CHAIR
Antonio Bicchi is Professor of Robotics at the University of Pisa, and Senior Scientist at the Italian Institute of Technology in Genoa. He graduated from the University of Bologna in 1988 and was a postdoc scholar at M.I.T. Artificial Intelligence lab in 1988–1990. He teaches Control Systems and Robotics in the Department of Information Engineering (DII) of the University of Pisa, leads the Robotics group at the Research Center "E. Piaggio'' of the University of Pisa since 1990, and served as Director from 2003 to 2012. He is an Adjunct Professor at the School of Biological and Health Systems Engineering of Arizona State University since 2013.
His main research interests are in Robotics, Haptics, and Control Systems in general. He has published more than 300 papers on international journals, books, and refereed conferences. He served as the President of the Italian Association or Researchers in Automatic Control in 2012-2013, as Editor in Chief of the Conference Editorial Board for the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (RAS), as Vice President and as Distinguished Lecturer of IEEE RAS. He is Editor-in-Chief for the book series ``Springer Briefs on Control, Automation and Robotics,'' and is in the editorial board of several scientific journals, including the top-ranked Int.l J. Robotics Research, the IEEE Trans. on Robotics and Automation, IEEE Trans. Automation Science and Engineering, and IEEE RAS Magazine. He has organized and co-chaired the first WorldHaptics Conference (2005), and Hybrid Systems: Computation and Control (2007). He is the recipient of several awards and honors. In 2012, he was awarded with an individual Advanced Grant from the European Research Council for his research on human and robot hands. Antonio Bicchi is a Fellow of IEEE since 2005.

Agostino BRUZZONE

MESAS'17 STRATEGY&ORGANIZATION COMMITTEE CHAIR
Agostino G. Bruzzone is Full Professor at DIME University of Genoa, Director of M&S Net (International Network involving 34 Centers) Director of the MISS McLeod Institute of Simulation Science - Genoa Center (over 28 Centers distributed worldwide) founder member and president of the Liophant Simulation, VicePresident and Member of the Board of MIMOS (Movimento Italiano di Simulazione) member of the NATO MSG. He works on innovative modeling, AI techniques, application of Neural Networks, GAs and Fuzzy Logic to industrial plant problems using Simulation and Chaos Theory. He is member of several International Technical and Organization Committees (i.e. AI Application of IASTED, AI Conference, ESS, AMS) and General Coordinator of Scientific Initiatives (i.e. General Chair of SCSC and I3M). He teaches "M&S" for the DIMS PhD Program (Doctorship in Integrated Mathematical M&S). He is Director of the Master Program in Industrial Plants for the University of Genoa. He is Project Leader M&S for the NATO Science & Technology Organization at the Centre for Maritime Research and Experimentation (CMRE).

Paolo PROIETTI

MESAS'17 STRATEGY&ORGANIZATION COMMITTEE
Paolo PROIETTI, Electronic Engineer, started working on simulation since during University, following modelling courses and discussing a thesis on dynamic robot modelling. His working activity has been wholly devoted to simulation both as responsible for projects and as business development manager for simulation and training. In 2002 he was one of the promoters and founders of the Italian Modelling and Simulation Association, named MIMOS and currently Chairman. Among others, he is in charge of organising workshops and conference on important simulation topics, such as homeland defence and security, industry, and medical applications. He also chaired several conference sessions and, in particular some specifically related to medical and serious games. He is a focal point for simulation and training activity in Selex ES, a Finmeccanica Company.. Furthermore, he is the Vice-chairman of the Finmeccanica Simulation Community, named MindSh@re SET2, and member of the ITEC Conference Committee. Recently he has been appointed as Italian industry representative at the NATO STO HFM Panel (Human Factor & Medicine) as far as the technological and training aspects is concerned.

L.Col. (A) Marco BIAGINI (ITA)

MESAS'17 STRATEGY&ORGANIZATION COMMITTEE
LTC Marco BIAGINI is the Concept Development and Experimentation (CD&E) Branch Chief at NATO Modelling & Simulation Centre of Excellence. He has a Ph.D. in Mathematics, Engineering, and Simulation and master degrees in strategic studies, peace keeping and security studies and, new media and communication. He has more than 15 years of experience in the M&S field. He was Battalion Commander at the Italian Army Unit for Digitization Experimentation (USD) and Section Chief at the Italian Army Simulation and Validation Centre. He is chairing the NATO M&S Group (NMSG) 150, and member of NMSG 145, NMSG 136 and NMSG 147.

CAPT. (N) Vincenzo MILANO (ITA)

NATO M&S COE DIRECTOR
CAPT (N) Vincenzo MILANO is the current Director of the NATO M&S COEsince August 10th 2015.

Previously, he contributed from January 2011 to August 9th 2015 to the development of the M&S Centre of Excellence in Rome in the role of Concept Development & Experimentation Branch Chief.

After graduating from the Italian Naval Academy in Maritime and Naval Science 1985, he embarked as Combat System Officer, Executive Officer and Commanding Officer on various Italian ships from 1985 to 2004. He served as Operational Section Officer at the Italian Naval Center for the Combat System Software Development integration, V&V and Life Cycle Support from 2004 to 2007. From 1998 to 2001 and from 2007 to 2010 he was appointed first as Combat Systems Operational Requirements Officer and then as Combat System Integration and Acceptance team leader, during the Project Definition, the Development and the Production of the Horizon AAW class frigates within a multinational Project Office. From the beginning of this year, CPT (N) Milano covers the additional role of main Italian Representative in the NATO Modeling & Simulation Group (NMSG) of Science & Technology Organization (S&TO). His area of expertise includes Naval Combat System Test and Trials in real and simulated environment for VV&A purposes; Naval Operational Doctrine; onboard military ships manning organization, Naval Operational Center management, ship maneuvering and onboard safety procedures. In 2005, he is also graduated in Political Science at the Trieste University. CAPT (N) Milano is married with Amalia and has two sons, Simone and Federico. He enjoys travel and sailing.

L.Col. (A) Jason M. JONES (USA)

MESAS'17 EVENT DIRECTOR
Lieutenent Colonel Jason M. JONES was assigned as Deputy Director for the NATO Modelling & Simulation Centre of Excellence in August 2016. Prior to this he was assigned to Headquarters, U.S. Army Pacific, Ft. Shafter, HI, where he served as the command’s Chief of Knowledge Management. In this position he led the team supporting the United States Army’s only four-star service component command developing processes and software tools to enhance shared understanding and improve decision-making. Jason M. Jones was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the U.S. Army’s Ordnance Corps in 1992 upon graduation from Transylvania University in Lexington, KY. Company grade assignments included Schofield Barracks, HI, Ft Stewart, GA and Ft Irwin, CA in the field of maintenance and logistics.In 2003, Jason transferred from Ordnance to Functional Area 57, Simulations Operations and attended several schools. In 2007 MAJ Jones was assigned to the National Simulation Center with duty at Ft. Lee’s Logistics Exercises and Simulation Directorate. During this assignment his duties had him involved all aspects of simulations: training, planning, world-wide simulation distribution, testing and experimentation. In 2009 he was assigned to the Headquarters, 101st Airborne Division where he was the lead planner for the division’s mission rehearsal exercise prior to deployment to Afghanistan for Operation Enduring Freedom X-XI. During and after the deployment he served in the Knowledge Management Section, supporting the Headquarters, Regional Command-East and its subordinate units. In 2012 LTC Jones was assigned again to Hawaii as the Simulation Officer for the 94th Army Air and Missile Defense Command. In this position LTC Jones managed all aspects of air and missile defence simulation for joint and multinational wargames and exercises in Hawaii, Korea and throughout the Pacific Theatre. Areas of expertise include: live and constructive training; missile defence and logistics simulation; and knowledge management. LTC Jones has a Bachelor of Arts in Biology from Transylvania University and a Master’s Degree in Modeling, Virtual Environments and Simulations from the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, CA. He co-authored a thesis examining the use of commercial gaming software for training infantry squads. His military education includes the Ordnance Officers Basic Course, the Combined Logistics Officers Advanced Course, the Combined Arms Services Staff School, the Command and General Staff College, and the Simulation Officer Basic and Advanced Courses. He has earned the Parachutist’s and Air Assault Badges and his awards include the Defense Meritorious Service Medal and five awards of the Meritorious Service Medal. He is married to Cynthia A. Jones of Chicago, IL and they have two children: Jessica and Wyatt. He enjoys travel, sailing and spending time with family.

L.Col. (A) Jan MAZAL (CZH)

MESAS'17 EVENT MANAGER AND PROCEEDINGS CHAIR
LTC. Doc. Ing. Jan Mazal, Ph.D., born in 1976, graduate of the Faculty of Military Systems Management of the Military College of Ground Forces in Vyskov. In 2003 he graduated the Academic Course of Military Intelligence in Fort Huachuca, Arizona, USA. Since 2005 he is a doctor in the field of the theory of the defence management of the State and since 2013 he is associated professor in the problematic of military management and C4ISR systems. He is former deputy chief of the Department of Military Management and Tactics at the University of Defence in Brno, currently he works as Doctrine Education and Training Branch Chief at NATO Modelling & Simulation Centre of Excellence in ROME. He is focused on the issue of military intelligence and reconnaissance, C4ISR systems, and implementation of information and model support to the commander’s decision-making process at the tactical level. He is the author and co-author of more than 70 professional publications, he solved more than 10 scientific projects, he is the author of a number of functional samples and application software. In his previous military practice, he held command and staff functions at the tactical level and also he took part in the foreign missions as EUFOR (2006) and ISAF (2010).

Filippo Arrichiello

TECHNICAL COMMITTEE
Filippo Arrichiello is Associate Professor in Control Engineering at the University of Cassino and Southern Lazio, Italy. He received the Laurea Degree in Mechanical Engineer form the University of Naples, Italy in 2003 and the PhD in Electrical and Information Engineering from the University of Cassino, Italy in 2007. He has been a visiting PhD student at the Centre of Excellence Centre of Ships and Ocean Structures of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway, and visiting researcher at the Robotic Embedded Systems Laboratory of the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, USA.His research activity focuses on industrial and mobile robotics with specific interest in multi-robot systems and marine robotics. He is author of more than 50 papers published in international journals and conferences proceedings in the field of robotics. He served as reviewer form many international journal and conference papers in the field of robotics and automation, as well as a Member of the Program Committee of several international conferences in the same field. Among the others, he is actually Editor (2016-18) of the IEEE Robotics & Automation Society Conference Editorial Board for the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

Richard Balogh

TECHNICAL COMMITTEE
Richard Balogh (*1969), obtained his MSc. equivalent degree in Technical Cybernetics in 1992 and received his Ph.D. in 2013, both from the Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava (STU). After spending 15 years at the Department of Robotics and Cybernetics, he is now at the new established Department for Automotive Mechatronics. His research interests cover sensor systems for mobile robots, embedded systems and internet of things. Richard Balogh is the founder of the international robotic competition Istrobot and is also interesting about mobile robot competitions and evaluation, especially in outdoor environment. He is an author and co-author of more than 50 papers at international conferences/scientific journals. He is also an author of popularization texts about robotics and technology.

Luca Bascetta

TECHNICAL COMMITTEE
Luca Bascetta was born in Milan (Italy) in 1974. He received the "Laurea" degree cum laude in Computer Science Engineering in 1999 and the Doctorate degree in Information Technology in 2004, both from Politecnico di Milano, Italy. From 2004 to 2006 he has been a Research Assistant at the Dipartimento di Elettronica e Informazione of Politecnico di Milano, teaching Control System Technologies and Engineering to Computer Science Engineering students. From December 2006 to December 2014 he has been an Assistant Professor in Automatic Control at the School of Industrial and Information Engineering of Politecnico di Milano, teaching Automatic Control to Aerospace Engineering students at Politecnico di Milano. Since January 2015 he has been an Associate Professor in Automatic Control at the School of Industrial and Information Engineering of Politecnico di Milano. Luca Bascetta currently teaches Automatic Control to Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering students at Politecnico di Milano. He took part in the writing of two founded European research projects in the field of robotics (ICT-230902-ROSETTA, Robot control for Skilled ExecuTion of Tasks in natural interaction with humans; based on Autonomy, cumulative knowledge and learning; ICT-231143-ECHORD, European Clearing House for Open Robotics Development), and to the research activities of some national research projects. He was the person in charge for Politecnico di Milano in the FP7 four years long European Integrating Project ECHORD as coordinator of the experiment FIDELIO FIxtureless DEburring of wheeLs by human demonstratIOn. His research interests include autonomous vehicles, robotics, and all the problems related to motion control. The research activity in the field of robotics includes modelling and control of flexible manipulators and visual servoing. He also worked in the mechatronics and motion control fields, in particular on the control of brushless/asynchronous motors using low resolution position sensors, and on model-based PID autotuning techniques for 1-d.o.f. and 2-d.o.f. control architectures. Since 2004 he is a reviewer of many international conferences and journals in the field of robotics, mechatronics and automatic control. He served in the Editorial Board of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Biomimetics, and the IEEE International Conference on Information and Automation. He is actually serving in the Editorial Board of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters. Furthermore, he received the Best Referee Award for the Journal of Process Control for the year 2008. Luca Bascetta is a member of IEEE Robotics and Automation Society since 2007.

Agostino G. Bruzzone

TECHNICAL COMMITTEE
Agostino G. Bruzzone is Full Professor at DIME University of Genoa, Director of M&S Net (International Network involving 34 Centers) Director of the MISS McLeod Institute of Simulation Science - Genoa Center (over 28 Centers distributed worldwide) founder member and president of the Liophant Simulation, VicePresident and Member of the Board of MIMOS (Movimento Italiano di Simulazione) member of the NATO MSG. He works on innovative modeling, AI techniques, application of Neural Networks, GAs and Fuzzy Logic to industrial plant problems using Simulation and Chaos Theory. He is member of several International Technical and Organization Committees (i.e. AI Application of IASTED, AI Conference, ESS, AMS) and General Coordinator of Scientific Initiatives (i.e. General Chair of SCSC and I3M). He teaches "M&S" for the DIMS PhD Program (Doctorship in Integrated Mathematical M&S). He is Director of the Master Program in Industrial Plants for the University of Genoa. He is Project Leader M&S for the NATO Science & Technology Organization at the Centre for Maritime Research and Experimentation (CMRE).

Alessandro Cignoni

TECHNICAL COMMITTEE
Alessandro Cignoni is an Italian Navy Lieutenant and acts as Simulation Based Acquisition Section Chief in the NATO Modelling and Simulation Centre of Excellence in Rome.
After graduating from the Italian Naval Academy (1997), he took a Bachelor of Science (2002) - University of Pisa -, a Master of Science (2003) - University of Pisa - and a Post University Master Degree (2008) - University of Genoa - in Telecommunications Engineering. During his career he was deployed aboard (Frigate, Destroyer, Landing Platform Deck) and in the ITA Navy Institute for Electronics & Telecommunications "Giancarlo Vallauri". He was Visiting Professor at the University of Pisa and the Italian Naval Academy (2005 - 2010). He collaborated in many national and multinational experimental activities, like Interoperable Network for Secure Communications (INSC), Coalition Wideband Networking Waveform (COALWNW), European Secure Software Radio (ESSOR). Just before joining the NATO M&S COE, he was Communication and Information Systems (CIS) Director and Assistant Chief of Staff for N6 Cell of the Commander Task Group CTG455.01 during NATO Operation "Unified Protector Lybia (2011). He is NATO M&S COE representative in MCDC Autonomous Systems Focus Area, member of SAS-RTG-097 "Robotics Underpinning Future NATO Operations" and member of MSG-117 "Exploiting Modelling & Simulation to support Cyber Defence". He wrote several papers in the field of Computer Networking and Modelling & Simulation.

Andrea D'Ambrogio

TECHNICAL COMMITTEE
Andrea D'Ambrogio is associate professor of computer science at the Dept. of Enterprise Engineering of the University of Roma "Tor Vergata" (Italy). He is Deputy Director of the post graduate one-year course in "Systems Engineering", recently established at the University of Roma "Tor Vergata". Andrea D'Ambrogio's research interests are in the software engineering field, specifically in the areas of engineering and validation of system performance and dependability, model-driven systems and software engineering, and distributed and web-based simulation. In such areas he has participated to several projects at both European and overseas level and has authored more than 70 journal/conference papers. He has served as member of the program committee of various international conferences, among which IEEE WETICE, ACM WOSP, ACM ICPE, SCS/ACM/IEEE TMS/DEVS, ACM PADS and SIMUTools. He is general chair of SCS/ACM/IEEE TMS/DEVS 2014 and has been general chair of IEEE WETICE 2008. In 2010 he started the IEEE International Workshop on Collaborative Modeling and Simulation (CoMetS) and in 2011 the SCS/ACM/IEEE International Workshop on Model-driven Approaches for Simulation Engineering (Mod4Sim). He is member of IEEE, IEEE Computer Society, ACM, SCS and INCOSE.

Marek Druzdzel

TECHNICAL COMMITTEE
Marek Druzdzel is an associate professor in the School of Information Sciences and in the Intelligent Systems Program and the director of the Decision Systems Laboratory at the University of Pittsburgh. He holds a joint appointment as a visiting professor in the Computer Science Department, Bialystok University of Technology, Poland. He received his M.S. degrees in Computer Science (1985) and Electrical Engineering
(1987) from the Delft University of Technology in The Netherlands (both with distinction) and his Ph.D. in Engineering and Public Policy (1992) from Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA. Prof. Druzdzel is a recipient of the Faculty Early Career Development Grant (known as CAREER grant) from the National Science Foundation (1996-2000), Outstanding Mentor Award (1997), and University of Pittsburgh Chancellor’s Distinguished Teaching Award (2007). He is also a fellow of the Collegium of Eminent Scientists, Kosciuszko Foundation and recipient of the 2009-2010 and 2016-2017 Fulbright Awards. His research interests concentrate on probabilistic and decision theoretic methods in decision support systems and human aspect of decision support. His laboratory is widely known for the graphical modeling software GeNIe and it’s API SMILE, currently available at http://www.bayesfusion.com/.

Adriano Fagiolini

TECHNICAL COMMITTEE
Adriano Fagiolini is an Assistant Professor at the University of Palermo, Italy. He received the M.S. degree in Computer Science Engineering in 2004 and the Ph.D. degree in Robotics and Automation in 2009 from the University of Pisa. He has been a Visiting Researcher at the University of California at Riverside, in 2015 and in 2017, in the Department of Mechanical
Engineering. He teaches Automatic Control Systems and Mobile Cooperating Robotic Systems at the University of Palermo, in the Department of Energy, Computer Science Engineering and Mathematical Models since 2012. He enrolled in the Summer Student Programme at the European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN), Geneva, in 2002, and in the International Curriculum Option of Doctoral studies in Hybrid control for complex, distributed, and heterogeneous embedded systems, in 2007. In 2008, he led the team of the University of Pisa during the first European Space Agency’s Lunar Robotics Challenge, which resulted in a second place prize for the team. He was one of the recipients of the IEEE ICRA's Best Manipulation Paper Award in 2005. His main research interests are in distributed coordination and misbehavior detection for systems of autonomous robots (including automated cars and aircrafts), coexisting in shared environments and interacting with each other according to sets of partially known “social behaviors", or common rules. His scientific interests also include distributed algorithms for consensus on set-valued Boolean information and for data clustering and estimation.

Jan Faigl

TECHNICAL COMMITTEE
Jan Faigl is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering (FEE), Czech Technical University in Prague (CTU). He received his Ph.D. (2010) in Artificial Intelligence and Biocybernetics and Ing. (2003) in Cybernetics from CTU. In 2013/2014, he was Fulbright visit scholar at the University of Southern California. He has been awarded the Antonin Svoboda award from the Czech Society for Cybernetics and Informatics in 2011. Since 2013, he is heading Computational Robotics Laboratory at the Artificial Intelligence Center (AIC), FEE, CTU. His current research interests are in unsupervised learning, self-organizing systems, navigation of mobile robots, and path and motion planning techniques. He is an author and co-author of more than 50 papers in international journals and conferences proceedings. He served as reviewer for many international journal and conference papers in the fields of robotics, neural networks, and artificial intelligence. He also served as a member of the Program Committee of several international conferences in the same fields, e.g., SMC 2013-16, AAAI 2014, IJCNN 2017, IJCAI 2017.

Jan Farlik

TECHNICAL COMMITTEE
Jan Farlik is a designated Chief of Air Defence Systems Department at the University of Defence in Brno, Czech Republic. His M.Sc. degree is from the branch Automated systems of C2 received from Military Academy, Brno in 2000. He receives his Ph.D. degree in technical cybernetics and mechatronics at the University of Defence in 2012. He was a member of SAS-097 Robots underpinning future operations. Now, he participates in MSG-154. His primal area of research is modelling and simulation of ground based air defence.

Pavel Foltin

TECHNICAL COMMITTEE
Col Dr. habil. Ing. Pavel Foltin, Ph.D.: he graduated from the Military College of Ground Forces in Vyškov in 2000, study branch National Defence Economics with specialization Logistics of Armed Forces. At 2004 he finished his Ph.D. studies and graduated from the same university. Since 2004 he worked in different working positions at Department of Logistics in Faculty of Economics and Management (assistant, researcher, senior researcher, deputy-head of department, since 2014 head of department). Since 2006 he worked at the same time as a Vice-Dean for Curricula, till 2010, in period 2010-2011 he worked as a Vice-Dean for PR and Development, since the end of 2011 he worked as s Vice-Dean for Research, till June 2015. In 2012 he successfully defended his habilitation (title Dr. habil.) at the National University of Public Service in Budapest (Hungary), study program Theory of Defence Administration in the field of study Military Sciences of Social Studies. He participates on national and international military exercises, research and cooperation projects (International Visegrad Fund, NATO DEEP). Since 2007 he is member of Permanent Working Group for Military and Security Field of Studies of the Czech Accreditation Committee. Since 2013 he is member of Sectorial Verification and Assessment Panel of the Research, Development and Innovation Council, an advisory body to the Government of the Czech Republic. His expert work deals with the military logistics of multinational operations, supply chain security, simulation and modelling of supply chains.

Fontanelli Daniele

TECHNICAL COMMITTEE
Birthday: October 27th 1974,Birthplace: Livorno, Italy, E-mail address: daniele.fontanelli@unitn.it, Current Position: From December 2015: Assistant Professor (RTD-B) at the Industrial Engineering Department (DII) of the University of Trento, Italy.Research Activities:The currently active research areas can be roughly divided into three overlapping research fields: measurements, control and automation, and robotics. Related to the first topic is the research thread on smart grids. The e ort is mainly devoted to the development of novel estimation algorithms based on measures coming from Phasor Measurement Units (PMU). The derived synchrophasors are then usually adopted for state estimation algorithms, which is another research activity currently under study for distribution grids. The measures collected from the smart grid sensors on the grid must have a proper time reference in order to be of use, which introduces another topic of active research that is the clock synchronisation. The problem has been firstly tackled for wired networks adopting the Precision Timing Protocol (PTP) and for Synchronous Ethernet, for which the main research e ort is devoted to the design of ecient estimatorsand controllers in the case of networks with hundreds of cascaded nodes, in which both imperfect clocks and external environmental factors are considered. Clock synchronization has been also considered for wireless sensor networks (WSN) since it is of paramount importance for measuring the time of flight of pulsed signals in the case of object or human localization, to run data aggregation and fusion algorithms, to minimize the network nodes' energy consumption. In this context, the research activity has been mainly focused on the analysis and design of distributed linear controllers. Localisation of human beings in indoor environments is another active research area. Solutions have been designed using measurements coming from environmental node sensors, wearable devices and, in case, the presence of a service robotused by the user. In the latter case, the design of localisation algorithms is a fundamental enabler for the contrl synthesis for service robots, where control shared authority paradigm is implemented. Beyond service robots, also the problem of Human Robot Interaction (HRI) in shared industrial environments has been treated recently. Solutions in this field are enablers for a more tight collaboration between humans and robots, which is a basic pillar for the factory of the future.

Petr Frantis

TECHNICAL COMMITTEE
Petr Frantis is an Associated Professor at the University of Defense in Brno, Czech Republic. He obtained his MSc degree in computer science at Military Academy in Brno and Ph.D. degree at University of Defense. He currently works as a deputy chief of Department of Communication and Information Systems. He serves as a reviewer for several journals as well as a program committee member of relevant international conferences. He published more than 60 papers at international conferences/scientific journals. His main fields of interest are visualization systems, simulation and synthetic environment. He worked on various projects for civil and military companies in Canada and Czech Republic.

Kamila Hasilova

TECHNICAL COMMITTEE
Kamila Hasilova works as an assistant professor at the University of Defence in Brno, Czech Republic; she is a head of Decision Making under Uncertainty and Risk Group​​ of the Department of Econometrics. She received her Ph.D. degree in Probability, Statistics and Mathematical Modelling from Masaryk University in 2012. She focuses on the application of statistical methods and her main research interests are non-parametric statistical methods, kernel smoothing of multivariate densities, and numerical methods used in statistics.

Hlavac Vaclav

TECHNICAL COMMITTEE
Václav Hlaváč, born 1956, MSc degree in control engineering 1981, Ph.D. in engineering cybernetics 1987, associate professor 1992, professor 1998. Head of the the Centre for Machine Perception since 1996. Deputy director of the Czech Institute of Informatics, Robotics and Cybernetics, where he also leads the Robotics and Machine Perception Group. His research interests and experience include 3D computer vision, videoanalytics, reconstruction of 3D scenes from 2D images, machine learning, industrial applications of machine vision, robotics, dual-arm robotic manipulation and high-level reasoning in robotics.

Jan Hodicky

TECHNICAL COMMITTEE
Jan Hodicky is a former Chief of the Doctrine Education and Training Branch in the Modelling and Simulation Centre of Excellence in Roma. He received his M.Sc. degree in Computer Science from the Military Academy, Brno, Czech Republic in 1999. After spending 4 years at the University of Defence as an Assistant Lecture he got his Ph.D. in the Modelling And Simulation field. In 2010 he became the Associate Professor at the University of Defence. He is the member of Czech MoD M&S Advisory Group. He focused on the M&S and C2 interoperability and M&S and C2/Sim visualization issues. Jan was MSG – 025 and MSG – 050 member and currently he is the member of MS3 group. He published more than 60 papers at international conferences/scientific journals

Jan Holub

TECHNICAL COMMITTEE
Prof. Ing. Jan Holub, Ph.D. is Head of Department of Measurement, FEE CTU Prague. He graduated from the Czech Technical University, Faculty of Electrical Engineering in 1996. After defending his PhD thesis (1999: Methods for Linearization of Transfer Characteristics by means of Dither Signals) he started to work as an assistant professor there. In 2004 he become associate professor (New Methods for Objective Voice Transmission Quality Measurements and Their Applications) and in 2016 full professor. His research interests and activities cover AD and DA converters, digital signal processing, psychoacoustics and measurements in telecommunication networks. He was awarded several patents and published more than 30 articles in scientific magazines and 110 contributions for conferences (82% international). In 1999 he established MESAQIN.com Ltd., MESAQIN.com deals primarily with speech, audio and multimedia subjective testing. Since the company establishment in 1999, MESAQIN.com has been involved in various standardisation projects including ETSI EG 202 396-2 (2006), ITU-T SG12 P.863 (2010), ETSI TR 103 121 (2013) or 3GPP SA4 EVS (2014), collecting multiple millions of subjective votes in total.

Jaroslav Hrdina

TECHNICAL COMMITTEE
Jaroslav Hrdina obtained his Msc degree in the field of Discrete mathematics at the Faculty of Science, Masaryk University Brno in 2007 and received his Ph.D. in Geometry, topology and global analysis at the same Faculty in 2013. Currently, he works on the Department of Algebra and Discrete mathematics of Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Brno University of Technology as an Associate Professor and at the Department of Adaptive Control as a researcher. His research interests cover engineering (mainly robotics, control theory) and computer graphics (binocular vision, image processing, pattern recognition), application of differential geometry (sub-Riemannian, sub-Finsler, Lie theroy) and Linear algebra (Clifford algebras, Lie algebras, theory of representations). He is an author and co-author of more than 20 papers in international high level scientific journals, regular reviewer of American mathematical society and mathematical journals, routine committee member of international conferences and editor of scientific journals.

Piotr Kosiuczenko

TECHNICAL COMMITTEE
Piotr Kosiuczenko is an Associated Professor of Software Engineering in the Institute of Information Systems at the Military University of Technology in Warsaw. His research areas include software engineering, modelling and specification of object-oriented systems and modelling languages, applications of logic, mathematical modelling. He studied mathematics at the the University of Warsaw. Afterwards he joined the University of Technology in Warsaw. In 1995, obtained PhD the University of Warsaw. Later, he joined the Institute of Computer Science at the University of Munich. In Munich, Dr. Kosiuczenko was working also as a research collaborator at the FAST software company. Since October 2003, he worked as a lecturer at the Department of Computer Science, University of Leicester, UK. In 2008, he joined the Institute of Information Systems.

Vaclav Krivanek

TECHNICAL COMMITTEE
Dr. Vaclav Krivanek is lecturer and researcher in University of Defence (Czech Republic). He received his Master degree in specialization The Control and Guidance Systems of Missiles from Military Academy, Czech Republic in 2002. In 2006 he obtained Mastere specialise diploma of Techniques for Aeronautics and Space from Ecole Nationale Superieure de l’Aeronautique et de l’Espace (SUPAERO), Toulouse, France. In 2010 he received the Ph.D. degree in diagnostic methods applied into a hybrid propulsion engine from University of Defence. He has participated in several projects concerning to UAV development. His research interests include diagnostic models, fault tolerant control and reliability theory connected to the UAV as well as UGV. He his also active in robotics domain especialy in SLAM and ROS. Currently he teaches at Department of Air Defence Systems of University of Defence.

Miroslav Kulich

TECHNICAL COMMITTEE
Miroslav Kulich is currently an assistant professor at the Czech Institute of Informatics, Cybernetics, and Robotics, Czech Technical University (C TU) in Prague. He received the Ph.D. degree in Artificial Intelligence and Biocybernetics at CTU in Prague, and RNDr. degree at Charles University in Prague, Faculty of Mathematics and Physics. He also spent 6 months at research fellowship at Helsinki University of Technology, Automation Technology Laboratory, Finland. Miroslav Kulich is an author or co-author of more than 50 publications at international conferences, 6 articles in impacted journals, 1 book, an editor of European Robotics Symposium (EUROS 2008) proceedings and he received two Best Paper Awards (EMCSR 2010, MESAS 2015). He serves as a reviewer for several impacted journals as well as a program committee member of relevant international conferences. His research interests include planning for single and multi-robot systems, especially in exploration and search&rescue scenarios.

Corrado Guarino Lo Bianco

TECHNICAL COMMITTEE
Corrado Guarino Lo Bianco received the Laurea Degree (with honors) in Electronic Engineering and the Ph.D. degree in Control System Engineering from the University of Bologna, Italy, in 1989 and 1994, respectively. Form the 1997 he is with the Dipartimento di Ingegneria dell'Informazione of the University of Parma, where he currently is Associate Professor in Industrial Robotics. During the period 2010-12, Corrado Guarino Lo Bianco has spent 9 months at the Institut für Robotik und Prozessinformatik of the Technische Universitaet Brauschweig for a research exchange. He is author or coauthor of 24 international journal papers, 36 international conference papers, and 3 international book chapters. He is author of two textbooks on Industrial Robotics. He has served as Associated Editor for the ICAR conference. In 2000, he organized the Special Session “Vehicle Motion Control Systems” for 2000 IEEE Intelligent Vehicles Symposium, IV2000, in Detroit, USA, while in 2012 he organized the workshop “Robot Motion Planning: Online, Reactive, and in Real-time” for the IEEE/RSJ Int. Conf. On Intelligent Robots and Systems, IROS2012 in Vilamora, Portugal. Corrado Guarino Lo Bianco has coordinated or has participated to several Industry-University joint projects. Moreover, he has participated to several national and international research projects. He is involved in researches concerning the optimal trajectory planning and the optimal control of industrial manipulators and mobile robots. In particular, his studies focus on the online minimum time trajectory planning under kinematic and/or dynamic constraints.

COL Pavel Manas

TECHNICAL COMMITTEE
COL Pavel Manas, PhD. Joined his military career with academia and education of future officers of The Czech Armed Forces. He is Head of the Department of Engineering Technology at the University of Defence. He is responsible for the education of young officers of the Czech Corps of Engineers, with main focus on technical aspects of general engineer support. His department provides the Czech Military with expertize and research in the field of military structures and cooperates with other military research and technical institutes and public universities. His personal interest is focusing on modelling and simulation technology, CAD and CAE technology, structural analysis of military and protective structures and effects of weapons on military structures

Lt.Col. Jan Mazal

TECHNICAL COMMITTEE
LTC. Doc. Ing. Jan Mazal, Ph.D., born in 1976, graduate of the Faculty of Military Systems Management of the Military College of Ground Forces in Vyskov. In 2003 he graduated the Academic Course of Military Intelligence in Fort Huachuca, Arizona, USA. Since 2005 he is a doctor in the field of the theory of the defence management of the State and since 2013 he is associated professor in the problematic of military management and C4ISR systems. He is former deputy chief of the Department of Military Management and Tactics at the University of Defence in Brno, currently he works as Doctrine Education and Training Branch Chief at NATO Modelling & Simulation Centre of Excellence in ROME. He is focused on the issue of military intelligence and reconnaissance, C4ISR systems, and implementation of information and model support to the commander’s decision-making process at the tactical level. He is the author and co-author of more than 70 professional publications, he solved more than 10 scientific projects, he is the author of a number of functional samples and application software. In his previous military practice, he held command and staff functions at the tactical level and also he took part in the foreign missions as EUFOR (2006) and ISAF (2010).

Pavel Mikunda

TECHNICAL COMMITTEE
Pavel Mikunda is a graduate of Brno University of Technology, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering. After completing his studies, he began working in the R&D Department at TATRA, a.s. as a designer, developer and research worker specialising in axle and chassis components. He subsequently worked for VOP 025 Nový Jičín, s.p. as the head of the Development Department and as the director of engineering with responsibility for special/military projects and new product development. After the merger of VOP 025 Nový Jičín and VOP-026 Šternberk, s.p., he was appointed to the position of executive director with responsibility for the R&D Department and Production Department. He is currently the director of the R&D Department at VOP CZ, s.p. He is the Czech Republic’s representative in the NATO AC/225 LCG LE – Main Group, MILVA and ToE UGV.

Antonio Moschitta

TECHNICAL COMMITTEE
Antonio Moschitta (M’01) received his Ph.D. Degree from University of Perugia in 2002. He is an assistant professor at the University of Perugia, Italy. His research interests include Power Quality, A/D, D/A Time to Digital conversion, Indoor Positioning, and Estimation Theory. He is author or co-author or more than 100 papers, appearing in International Journals or Conference Proceedings. He was General co-Chair of the 2012 IEEE Workshop on Environmental, Energy, and Structural Monitoring Systems EESMS 2012. He is currently Chair of the IEEE Systems Council Italian Chapter.

Vladimir Mostyn

TECHNICAL COMMITTEE
Vladimir Mostyn received the MSc. degree in Electrical Engineering in 1979 from the VSB - Technical University of Ostrava, Czech Republic. He worked as a project engineer in Metallurgical Project in Ostrava from 1979 to 1987 and then as a Research Assistant with the Department of Robotics at the Mechanical Engineering Faculty of the VSB – TU Ostrava. Since 1990, he has been an Assistant Professor with the Department of Robotics and he received the PhD. degree in 1996 in Control Engineering at the same university. He was appointed to degree Professor in branch Production Systems with Industrial Robots and Manipulators in 2006 at the Technical University of Kosice, Slovak Republic. Now he is working as professor at the Department of Robotics at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering at the VSB – Technical University of Ostrava, Czech Republic. He is the author of 2 books and more than 80 articles. His research interests include robotics, simulation of the complex mechatronic systems and computer aided systems. Prof. V. Mostyn is an Associate Editor of the journal MM Science Journal and the member of Czech Association of Robotic Surgery.

Pierpaolo Murrieri

TECHNICAL COMMITTEE
Pierpaolo Murrieri works in the “CTO International Projects & Grants” department of Selex ES, a Finmeccanica company, as senior program manager and technical coordinator of engineering and inter-divisional teams. He is involved in national and international projects belonging to strategic R&D areas. Since 2006 he has been working for other companies of the Finmeccanica group (Elsag, Elsag Datamat, Selex Elsag) in which he covered numerous roles in a variety of different sectors (Engineering, CTO, Strategy and Innovation, Product Management). Before, since 2004, he was a research fellow at PARADES EEIG, a research and innovation lab of Cadence, STM, Magneti Marelli, UTC. Born in Casarano (Lecce) in 1974, he graduated in Electronics Engineering at the University of Pisa in 2000 with a thesis on the “Registration of biomedical images for multimodal applications”. Successively he got the Ph.D. from the Interdepartmental Center “E. Piaggio”, University of Pisa, on the subject Robotics and Automation with a dissertation on “Visual Servoing Autonomous Mobile System via Hybrid Techniques”. In 2003 he has been visiting student at the Autonomous Systems Lab of the EPFL of Lausanne (CH). During its Ph.D course he was appointed as teaching assistant for undergraduate courses in Control Systems at the University of Pisa and published several papers in the areas of hybrid systems and non-holonomic vehicles control. He is mentor of the Cognitive Sensing focus group of the Finmeccanica’s Autonomous System MindSh@re innovation community. He holds a certification as Project Management Professional and has been entitled IEEE Senior Member.

Andrzej Najgebauer

TECHNICAL COMMITTEE
Professor of MUT Andrzej NAJGEBAUER Ph.D., D.Sc - Leader of Modelling and Simulation for Decision Support in Conflict and Crisis Situations Team (Military University of Technology, Faculty of Cybernetics, Warsaw, Poland). He was the Vice-President of Military University of Technology for scientific affairs(2008-2012), Warsaw, Poland, Dean of Cybernetics Faculty (2005-2008). He was formerly Chief of Decision Support Systems Department and Professor in the Institute of Computer and Information Systems. He has Master’s degree in Computer Science (Military University of Technology, 1981), Ph.D. in Computer Sciences, System Optimization (Military University of Technology,1988), Certificate, Doctor of Science in Computer Science, Decision Support Systems, (Polish habilitation in Warsaw University of Technology, Faculty of Electronics and Information Technology, 1999). His scientific and professional also educational work is connected with theory of systems, artificial intelligence, modeling and simulation, modeling and designing of military decision support systems, conflict analysis, threat prediction, war games designing, exercise and training systems (CAX) – designing and development, cybersecurity and cyberwar. He was project leader of Polish Army Simulation System for CAXes. He is the member of IFORS and member of Polish Society of Operations Research and Systems Analysis, vice-president of Polish Society of Computer Simulation. He is Polish representative of STO/NATO MSG and also leader of NMSG 026 activity in subject of Early Warning Systems for terrorist crisis. He is the project leader of many Polish or international projects on Decision Support Systems in the area of Security and Defense. He is the specialist in Capability Based Planning for Polish Armed Forces in the area of Computer Based Decision Support. A member of Advisory Board of Polish Armed Forces in the area of Information Technology and Computer Simulation. He is an advisor of Polish Defense Holding. He was the supervisor of 9 doctorates, and also an organizer and president of many international scientific conferences in the area of Military Communication and Information Systems and Computational Intelligence. Author of 5 books and over than 100 publications. He is a member of special group of analysts, who participated in the evaluation of possible results of international war game for eastern Europe (horizon: 10 years).

Petr Novak

TECHNICAL COMMITTEE
Petr Novak, prof., MSc., Ph.D., Petr Novak, born in 1959, obtained ing. degree (=MSc.) in 1985, 1996 - Ph.D., 1999 - Associate Professor and 2009 Full Professor. He works at Department of Robotics (now as head of department) of the Faculty Mechanical Engineering, VSB – Technical University of Ostrava, Czech republic. He is the author /co-author of more than 120 professional publications, a number of functional samples and application software, actually he solved projects: System for virtual TELEportation of RESCUER for inspecting coal mine areas affected by catastrophic events (European Project, program Research Fund for Coal and Steel), 2014-2017; System for monitoring thermal exposure of firemen and rescue workers, 2014-2015; Special wheel for stair climbing, 2014-2015; Robotics arm for military mobile UGW platform TAROS, 2014-2017. He is author many engineering works, like control system controlling and visualizing the Stage Tables in Smetana’s Hall in Municipal house in Prague, obotics welding machine working in France, Switzerland, Belgium, Ukraine and the Czech Republic. His R&D area is: Robotics, Collaborative robotics, Mechatronics, Drives, Sensors, Application of the Neural Networks, Machine vision, Embedded control systems, Control systems for ATEX.

Lucia Pallottino

TECHNICAL COMMITTEE
Lucia Pallottino is currently Assistant Professor at the Centro "E. Piaggio" and the Dipartimento di Ingegneria dell'Informazione at the University of Pisa. She received the "Laurea" degree in Math from the Department of Mathematics in the University of Pisa in 1998. She got a Doctoral degree in Robotics and Industrial Automation at Centro "E. Piaggio" at the faculty of Engineering, in January 2002. She has been Visiting Scholar at M.I.T. (2000-2001) in the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems (LIDS ). She has been Visiting Researcher at UCLA, (2004) in the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department (MAE ). She is Vice-Chair of the IEEE Robotics & Automation Society Italian Chapter (I-RAS). Her main research interests within Robotics are in motion planning and control for nonholonomic vehicles, optimal control of constrained systems, distributed control of multi–robot vehicles and quantised control. She has published more than 40 papers in International Journal and Conferences (Google scholar h–index=12). She has served IEEE (CASE, ICRA, IVS, IROS, ARMS, IRAM, SAC) as a Program Committee member and was a co-chair of the Technical Program Committee of CONET2012 workshop. She has also been external Reviewer for research projects for the: Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) in the Computer Sciences and Engineering field, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) for “Discovery Grant” research projects and the Fund for Scientific Research (F.R.S.-FNRS) in Brussels. She is member of the Editorial Board of the International Journal of Advanced Robotic Systems. Receipient of the "IEEE-RAS Italian Chapter Young Author Best Paper Award 2009" for the paper: L. Pallottino, V.G. Scordio, A. Bicchi, E. Frazzoli, "Decentralized cooperative policy for conflict resolution in multivehicle systems," on IEEE Transactions on Robotics, 23 (6):1170-1183, 2007.

Stefan Pickl

TECHNICAL COMMITTEE
Stefan Pickl studied mathematics, electrical engineering, and philosophy at TU Darmstadt and EPFL Lausanne 1987-93. Dipl.-Ing. ’93, Doctorate 1998 with award. Assistant Professor at Cologne University (Dr. habil. 2005; venia legendi "Mathematics"). Visiting Professor at University of New Mexico (U.S.A.), University Graz (Austria), University of California at Berkeley, Naval Postgraduate School NPS Monterey (U.S.A.). Visiting scientist at SANDIA, Los Alamos National Lab, Santa Fe Institute for Complex Systems and MIT. Associated with Centre for the Advanced Study of Algorithms CASA (USA), Center for Network Innovation and Experimentation CENETIX, vice-chair of EURO group “Experimental OR”.Program for Highly Gifted Pupils, Research Program “Intelligent Networks and Security Structures” (INESS), International Best Paper Awards ’03, ’05, '07. Chair of the Advisory Board of the German Society for Operations Research (GOR). Chair of the GOR working group “Simulation and Optimization of Complex Systems”.Research Interests are the Optimization of Complex Systems, IT Based Decision Support Systems/ Reachback Architectures, Strategic Management. Foundation of COMTESSA (Core Competence Center C3 for Operations Research, Management - Strategic Studies, Safety and Security ALLIANCE), member of MUNICH AEROSPACE (Aviation Management).

Lorenzo Pollini

TECHNICAL COMMITTEE
Lorenzo Pollini was born in Grosseto, Italy in 1971. He received the Laurea degree in Computer Engineering (cum laude) and the Ph.D. degree in Robotics and Industrial Automation from the University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy, in 1997 and 2000, respectively. He was an Instructor of Automatic Control with the Italian Navy Academy, Livorno, Italy from 2000 to 2002, and an assistant professor of Automatic Control with University of Pisa from 2014. He is currently an Associate Professor of Automatic Control at the University of Pisa, Italy, and teaches the courses of Guidance and Navigation Systems, and Digital Control Systems. He is member of the IEEE Systems Man and Cybernetics Society - Shared Control Technical Committee, and of the AIAA Guidance Navigation and Control Technical Committee. He has been the Italian member of the NATO-RTO-AVT-146 Technical Team named "Platform Innovations and System Integration for Unmanned Air, Land and Sea Vehicles". He served in the technical organizing committees of several conferences organized by international societies. His current research interests include guidance and navigation systems, vision-based control, haptic support systems, fuzzy and nonlinear adaptive control, and real-time dynamic systems simulation with specific application to unmanned systems. He has been principal investigator or participated to several research projects funded by private or public companies, The Italian Ministry of Education and the European Commission. He authored more than 100 scientific publications, including 3 book chapters and he is also co-author of a chapter of the Encyclopedia of Aerospace Engineering, published by John Wiley & Sons. He is senior member of AIAA and member of IEEE.

Robert Popela

TECHNICAL COMMITTEE
Robert Popela (Senior researcher and lecturer) is head of Aerodynamics and Space Technology group at Insitiute of Aerospace Engineering, Brno University of Technology / UNIBRNO. Main areas of interest are active flow control research (eg. industry oriented contractual research for Volkswagen A.G.), aerodynamic optimization (CESAR – European FP6 project, CFD analyses and optimization of transonic business jet aircraft, EV55 Outback – twin engine turboprop commuter aircraft CFD aerodynamic optimization, VELA - Very Efficient Large Aircraft, European FP5 project, CFD optimization of 900PAX blended wing body commercial jet transport aircraft), space technology (project manager of SPARTAN - SPAce exploration Research for Throttleable Advanced eNgine, European FP7, Cooperation Theme 9 – SPACE REA Grant Agreement No. 262837 flight testing, heat switch for Exomars mission application, ESA project) and Unmanned Aerial Vehicle design and development (patented ballistic recovery systém for UAVs, design and development vehicles for industrial customers).Provide lectures: Courses at Institute of Aerospace Engineering: Low Speed Aerodynamics, High Speed Arodynamics, Aerodynamics and Flight Mechanics, Aircraft Conceptual Design.

Vaclav Prenosil

TECHNICAL COMMITTEE
Vaclav PRENOSIL is a principal member of the Czech Republic at the NMSG. He graduated from the Military Academy in Brno in 1975. From 1975 to 1980 he occupied various technician positions at 10th Air Force Army of the Czech Republic in Hradec Kralove. In 1998 he habilitated as an Associate Professor in the field of Military Electronics, Computer Science and Cybernetics. In 2002 he graduated professorial appointment procedure - Professor (Prof.) in the field of Military Electronics, Computer Science and Cybernetics. Since 1996 to 2002 he has been the Vice-Rector for Research Activities of the Military Academy in Brno. In 2000 he spent three months at the University of Central Florida and the Institute for Simulation and Training at Orlando. He was the manager and co-manager of 35 scientific assignments. In the period 1998-2001 he was a contact person for the implementation of international assistance to FMF of the Congress of the USA in the sphere of introduction of the simulation and simulators technology into the Army of the Czech Republic.
Since 2003 he is principal member of the Czech Republic in the NATO Modeling and Simulation Group (NMSG) of NATO Research and Technology Organization (STO now). His scientific activity concentrates mainly on the sphere of application of computer graphics in the systems of display of information, design and diagnostics of digital systems, conceptions of systems with enhanced reliability and cyber defense technologies.

Libor Preucil

TECHNICAL COMMITTEE
Dr. Libor Přeučil (*1961), obtained his Ing. degree (=MSc.) in Technical Cybernetics & Robotics in 1985 and received his Ph.D. in 1993, both from Czech Technical University in Prague (CVUT). He is founding member of the Gerstner Laboratory for Intelligent Decision Making at the Department of Cybernetics, founder and head of the Intelligent and Mobile Robotics group (since 1993). Libor Přeučil is experienced and recognized senior research fellow being involved in many projects within the TEMPUS, INCO Copernicus, EU Framework Programs FP5-FP7, i.e. coordinator of the FP5 project PeLoTe, EURON II - national coordinator, and currently participating in FP7 integrated projects (Replicator, Symbrion), Czech Grant Agency, University Development Fund projects, etc. and multiple industrial contracts (co-founder of the Center for Advanced Field Robotics). He guarantees international cooperation with other robotic laboratories as i.e. GRASP Laboratory at University of Pennsylvania, Drexel university and others in the field of advanced robotics, vice-chair of the IEEE TC Networked Robots, etc. His research interests cover mobile robot control, in particular robot navigation and long-term autonomy, autonomous outdoor robotics, robot mapping and large environment robot operation. He is author or co-author of about 200 publications including four textbooks and edited books on AI and robotics.

Dalibor Prochazka

TECHNICAL COMMITTEE
Dr. Dalibor PROCHÁZKA (LTC Ret.) (*1962) graduated from the Faculty of Numeric Mathematics and Cybernetics at the Moscow State University in 1986 and he defended his PhD theses in technical cybernetics at the Military Academy in Brno in 1997. He became an assistant professor at the Department of Technical Cybernetics and Military Robotics at the Military Academy in Brno in 1987. He participated on research and implementation in the field of modelling and simulation for military training, 1998 – 2005. After retiring from the military service he worked as a project manager at VR Group, 2006-2009 and as database manager at the Joint Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Defence Centre of Excellence. As an analyst at the Defence Policy and Strategy Division of Ministry of Defence (2011-2013) he worked on cyber defence policy. After joining the Centre for Security and Military Strategic Studies he focuses on modelling and simulation for defence and security studies.

Josef Procházka

TECHNICAL COMMITTEE
Josef Procházka, Ph.D. (born in 1966) is deputy director of the Centre for Security and Military Strategic Studies of the University of Defence in Brno. He received his Ph.D. in defence management from the University of Defence in Brno in 2005. His research focuses on strategic defence management in general and defence policy adaptation and capability planning under uncertainty in particular. He published more than sixty conference papers, journal articles and book chapters on these topics. His professional carrier spans 22 years of military service including basic military duties, staff positions at General Staff and MoD level, two operational deployments abroad and academic assignments. He retired from the military service 2007. From 2011 to 2014 he represented the Czech Republic at the NATO HQ dealing with resource policy and plans. He studied defence resource management at Navy Postgraduate School in Monterey, US (2002) and advance security studies at Marshall Centre in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany (2008). Since 2015 he represents the Czech Republic at the System Analysis and Studies Panel of NATO Science and Technology organisation.

Paolo Proietti

TECHNICAL COMMITTEE
Paolo PROIETTI, Electronic Engineer, started working on simulation since during University, following modelling courses and discussing a thesis on dynamic robot modelling. His working activity has been wholly devoted to simulation both as responsible for projects and as business development manager for simulation and training. In 2002 he was one of the promoters and founders of the Italian Modelling and Simulation Association, named MIMOS and currently Chairman. Among others, he is in charge of organising workshops and conference on important simulation topics, such as homeland defence and security, industry, and medical applications. He also chaired several conference sessions and, in particular some specifically related to medical and serious games. He is a focal point for simulation and training activity in Selex ES, a Finmeccanica Company.. Furthermore, he is the Vice-chairman of the Finmeccanica Simulation Community, named MindSh@re SET2, and member of the ITEC Conference Committee. Recently he has been appointed as Italian industry representative at the NATO STO HFM Panel (Human Factor & Medicine) as far as the technological and training aspects is concerned

Jan Rohac

TECHNICAL COMMITTEE
Assoc. prof. Jan ROHÁČ, Ph.D. received his Master degree (Ing. = MSc. equivalent) in 2000 and PhD. degree in 2005 from Faculty of Electrical Engineering (FEE), Czech Technical University in Prague (CTU), Czech Republic. In 02/2015 he became an associate professor at FEE, CTU. He teaches courses concerning avionics and navigation systems and is responsible for the master degree study branch “Aircraft and space systems” and is a director of the master study program “Aerospace Engineering” at FEE, CTU. His main research interests are avionics, inertial navigation systems, GNSS, sensors and their modeling, system design, and data processing methods. Dr. Roháč is a vice-president of the Czech Aerospace Society and a representative of the CTU in the PEGASUS Network. He is a coordinator of activities carried on within the NavLIS group at the Dept. of Measurement aimed at research and development of navigation systems and their measuring units. The activities include both HW and SW design plus system modeling and integration, algorithms for data processing and fusion, and analog signal processing.

Milan Rollo

TECHNICAL COMMITTEE
Dr. Milan Rollo works as a senior researcher in the Artificial Intelligence Center at the Department of Computer Science, FEE, CTU. He received an MSc degree in Technical Cybernetics (2002) and PhD degree in Artificial Intelligence and Biocybernetics (2009). His main research interests are distributed agent-based systems, especially team action planning, communication management and resource allocation. In recent years he was participating on numerous research projects funded by industry partners, national research programs, EU and US defense agencies. At present he is active in a field of collective robotics, with focus on deployment of free-flight concept approaches on autonomous UAVs (funded by Czech MoD and US AFRL in cooperation with NUAIR FAA UAS Test Site in Rome, NY). He was a visiting researcher with Institute for Human and Machine Cognition (IHMC), Pensacola, USA. He is an author or coauthor of more than 30 scientific papers and member of program and organizing committees of several international conferences. He is a member of NATO NIAG SG-205 Sense and Avoid Feasibility and Certification for UAS Flight in Non-Segregated Airspace and EUROCAE WG-105 Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS).

Martin Saska

TECHNICAL COMMITTEE
Martin Saska received his MSc. degree at Czech Technical University in Prague, 2005, and his Ph.D. degree at University of Wuerzburg, Germany, within the PhD program of Elite Network of Bavaria, 2009. Since 2009, he is a research fellow at Czech Technical University in Prague, where he founded and heads the Multi-robot Systems lab (http://mrs.felk.cvut.cz/) and co-founded Center for Robotics and Autonomous Systems with more than 40 researchers cooperating in robotics (https://robotics.fel.cvut.cz/cras/). He was a visiting scholar at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA in 2008 and at University of Pennsylvania, USA in 2012, 2014 and 2016, where he worked with Vijay Kumar's group within GRASP lab. He is an author or co-author of more than 40 publications in peer-reviewed conferences and more than 10 publications in impacted journals, including IJRR, AURO, RAS, ASC, EJC, with > 600 citations indexed by Scholar and h-index 14. He led a team composed of CTU in Prague, University of Pennsylvania, University of Lincoln that obtained gold medal in 3-challenge, silver medal in 1-challenge and bronze medal in GRAND-challenge of the MBZIRC 2017 competition in Abu Dhabi (http://mrs.felk.cvut.cz/projects/mbzirc, http://mbzirc.com/). He received best paper award at ICUAS 2013 and he was best paper award honored finalist at ICRA 2008. He was program committee member of RA 2007, FLAIRS 27, IDC 2013, FLAIRS 28, ICUAS 2015, ICRA 2016, ICUAS 2016, IROS 2017, ICUAS 2017 and serves as reviewer in IEEE trans. on automatic control, IEEE trans. on automation science and engineering, Journal of intell. & robotic syst., Autonomous robots, Swarm intelligence, European journal of control, Journal of the franklin institute, Engineering and applied mathematics. His interests include cooperation and control of multi-robot systems, formation flying, and bio-inspired swarms. The main scientific target of his group is to design a multi-robot system for stabilization and navigation of compact groups of cooperating micro aerial vehicles in clustered GPS-denied environment.

Marcin Sosnowski

TECHNICAL COMMITTEE
Marcin Sosnowski (born 1979) received his M.Sc. degree from Czestochowa University of Technology, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Ph.D. degree from Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Computer Science at the same University. He has authored more than 50 papers and is the editor-in-chief of Technology, Computer Science, Safety Engineering journal. He gained industrial experience while supervising and controlling the Combined Heat&Power generating set. He also worked for General Electric Company as analysis engineer where he was responsible for the development and validation of highly specialized computer tools dedicated to computational domain discretization. He also carried out CFD analysis concerning combustion chambers of jet engines and gas turbines. Since 2009 he works at Jan Dlugosz University in Czestochowa (Poland). He is the head of the Institute of Technology and Safety Systems. His main research interest is computational fluid dynamics and advanced discretization techniques of computational domain.

Radomír Ščurek

TECHNICAL COMMITTEE
Radomír Ščurek, Assoc. Prof. MSc. MA BA Ph.D. ; Study guarantor of security of persons and property, deputy Head Department of Security Services Faculty of Safety Engineering VŠB - Technical University of Ostrava, Lieutenant Colonel in reserve, born 1966, graduate of the Technical University of Ostrava, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering (1988), Police Academy in Prague (1998), University of Ostrava in Ostrava, Faculty of Arts (2006), Technical University of Ostrava, Faculty of Safety Engineering (2008). He worked at various levels in the police, most recently in service relationship (2000) as the investigator Serious Economic Crime Investigation Bureau at the Regional Police in Ostrava. From 2000 to 2003 he was an inspector of 1st. Department of Inspection of the Ministry of Defence in Prague, where he dealt mainly respect for human rights, interpersonal relationships and business legal issues in the resort. He currently works at the VSB - Technical University of Ostrava, the Department of Security Services of the Faculty of Safety Engineering. From 2006 to 2010 he lectured at the University of Ostrava in Ostrava, Faculty of Health Studies War medicine, social pathology and gender mainstreaming. He is an associate professor at universities in Poland, which deals with internal security of the state. He is a member of scientific and professional council at several universities, has authored numerous monographs, articles, and lead and routed more than 50 theses and leads about 8 doctoral students. He worked still works on more than 7 security research projects.

Jafer Shafagh

TECHNICAL COMMITTEE
Dr. Shafagh Jafer is an Assistant Professor of Software Engineering at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Florida, USA. She holds a PhD in Computer Systems Engineering from Carleton University in Canada. Her research interest include simulation-based engineering, mission-critical software systems, and model-based development. Dr. Jafer has lead and worked on funded research projects from Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and US Air Force Research Lab (AFRL). She serves as the General Chair of Annual Simulation Symposium at Spring Simulation Multiconference, and co-initiated and chairs the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Modeling and Simulation Technologies (AIAA MST) Aviation Simulation Scenario Development Working Group. She is currently collaborating with German Aerospace Research Center (DLR) on standardization of Aviation Simulation Scenario Development.

Julie M. Stark

TECHNICAL COMMITTEE
Dr. Julie M. Stark is the Office of Naval Research Global (ONRG) Associate Director for Autonomy and Unmanned Systems. She is responsible for developing a portfolio to enhance international science and technology opportunities that support the Naval Research Enterprise and the Naval Science and Technology Strategic Plan.

Petr Stodola

TECHNICAL COMMITTEE
Petr Stodola is an associated professor at University of Defence in Brno, Czech Republic, where he works as a senior researcher of the Department of Tactics. He received his Ph.D. degree in the field of military technology at University of Defence in 2006. His research interests include optimization, combat modeling and simulation, command and control decision support systems and C4ISR systems. He is the author or co-author of more than 100 scientific papers, and more than 10 functional samples and application software. He participated in more than 10 scientific projects.

Peter Stütz

TECHNICAL COMMITTEE
Prof. Dr.- Ing. Peter Stütz is professor of aeronautical engineering at the University of the Bundeswehr Munich since 2008. He received his diploma in aeronautical engineering from the Technical University Munich and his doctorate degree from the University of the Bundeswehr Munich in 1999. After that, he spent 10 years in industry working on various fields of experimental avionics and was head of aircraft training simulation at ESG GmbH in Munich. His scientific focus lies on platform and equipment aspects of unmanned aerial vehicles. This includes avionics, communication and sensor related issues. He sees his work on sensor integration and sensor data analyses especially as an enabling mean towards more autonomous vehicle behavior.

Andreas Tolk

TECHNICAL COMMITTEE
Andreas Tolk is Technology Integrator at the MITRE Corporation in Hampton, Virginia, and adjunct Professor for Engineering Management and Systems Engineering as well as for Modeling, Simulation, and Visualization Engineering at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, USA. He received his M.S. and Ph.D. degree from the University of the Federal Armed Forces of Germany in Munich. Dr. Tolk edited seven books and published more than 250 conference papers, book chapters, and journal articles and received numerous awards, recently the Distinguished Professional Achievement Award of the Society for Modeling and Simulation. His research focuses on interoperability and composability challenges of model-based solutions, such as simulation systems, executable architectures, and MBSE artefacts. He applies this research among other domains to integrating agent-based methods for improved decision making into robots as well as to utilizing agent-based simulation environment for technology-appropriate testing of unmanned autonomous systems. He is a Fellow of the Society for Modeling and Simulation, and a senior member of ACM and IEEE.

David Valis

TECHNICAL COMMITTEE
David Vališ received Ph.D. in military technics, weapons and ammunition from Brno Military Academy, Czech Republic in 2003 (at present called the University of Defence) and Ph.D. in Mathematics: Probability, Statistics and Mathematical Modelling from Masaryk University in 2016.
Since 2005, he has been working at the University of Defence, but cooperates with other universities worldwide. At present, he acts as a deputy head of the Department of Combat and Special Vehicles with the Faculty of Military Technologies. His main research domains include reliability and safety assessment of systems and processes.

Petr Vasik

TECHNICAL COMMITTEE
Petr Vasik is currently an assistant professor at the Institute of Mathematics at Brno University of Technology (BUT), Czech Republic. He received the Ph.D. degree in Applied mathematics, namely focused on applications of differential geometry. He is an author or co-author of more than 20 publications in mathematical journals, mostly indexed by ISI WoS. Petr Vasik was also a principal investigator of a grant by the Czech Science Foundation (GACR) and now participates on the grant GACR named "Advances in Snake-like Robot Control" as a team member. Currently, he is a researcher at the NETME centre of excellence at BUT. He serves as a reviewer for several impacted journals as well as a programme committee member of relevant international conferences. His research interests include geometric control theory, applications of Clifford (geometric) algebras in robotics and computer vision, and geometric theory of dynamical systems.

Jiří Vokřínek

TECHNICAL COMMITTEE
Jiří Vokřínek is an associate professor, deputy head of the Artificial Intelligence Center, and deputy chair of Department of Computer Science at Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Czech Technical University in Prague, Czech Republic. He has a university master degree in Technical Cybernetics and a PhD degree in Artificial Intelligence and Biocybernetics. His research interests are artificial intelligence, multi-agent and multi-robot systems, and computational robotics with focus to autonomous vehicles planning, coordination and cooperation, mission planning, team coordination, navigation and trajectory planning. He was participating on projects in the fields of agent-based planning in manufacturing (IST Trial Project ExPlanTech, 2000-2002) and extra-enterprise production planning and virtual enterprises (IST Project ExtraPlanT, 2002-2004), advanced agent-based technologies for supporting virtual organizations (IST Integrated Projects ECOLEAD, 2004-2008, PANDA, 2005-2008, and CONTRACT, 2006-2009), agent-based production processes simulations (Austrian government funded project CONCEERN, 2003-2005) and distributed dynamic cooperative systems design (ARTEMIS Joint Undertaking project D3COS). He was also participating on U.S. Army sponsored research in the field of distributed planning and coordination (I-Globe, 2008), agent-based coordination and planning for heterogeneous robotic teams (AgentScout, 2009-2010, Tactical AgentFly, 2009-2012, and AgentFly-In-Air, 2011-2012) and crowd modelling (Traffic Flow Modeling, 2012-2013). Since 2010, he is also in charge of development and deployment of advanced planning systems for Foxconn CZ manufacturing company. He is a member of management committee of the Autonomic Road Transport Systems COST action. He is an author of more than 40 scientific publications and his h-index is 11 according to google scholar.

Premysl Volf

TECHNICAL COMMITTEE
Premysl Volf is a senior researcher at Department of Computer Science, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Czech Technical University in Prague. He holds master degree in Software Engineering at Charles University in Prague and Ph.D. degree in Artificial Intelligence at Czech Technical University in Prague. He is author and co-author of more than 30 publications at international conferences, impacted journal, book chapters and one U.S. patent. Premysl focuses on areas of fast-time large-scale multi-agent simulations, simulation of air traffic and air traffic management, cognitive behavior of human operators, especially air traffic controllers, algorithms for trajectory planning and conflict detection and resolution for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAS). Majority of research topics are implemented in the AgentFly system that is used by both U.S. and Europe government agencies and private companies.

Ludek Zalud

TECHNICAL COMMITTEE
WORK EXPERIENCE: 06/2011-present – Senior Researcher, CEITEC STI RG2-2, Research and Development of autonomous and teleoperated field robots, 08/2010-08/2011 – Senior Researcher, CVVOZE, Research and development
08/2011-present – Senior Researcher, FNUSA-ICRC, Research and development of rehabilitation medicine devices, optical body scanning, 04/2009-present – Head of Research, LTR s.r.o., Project leadership, development of heavy-duty mobile robot platforms, teleoperated and autonomous mobile robots, 09/2000-12/2011 – Researcher, Centre of Applied Cybernetics, Research, 09/2000-present – Researcher and academic staff, Brno University of Technology, Research: telepresence, human-to-robot interfaces, navigation, data-fusion, teaching: mobile and industrial robotics. 06/1993-09/1999 – Alcor/Moravske pristroje a.s., Masarykova 1148, Zlin, 763 02, Software developer EDUCATION: 06/2016 – Professor, Brno University of Technology, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Communication, Electrotechnics and Automation 08/2006 – Associate Professor, Brno University of Technology, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Communication, Electrotechnics and Automation, habilitation thesis: Teleoperated Reconnaissance Robotic Systems 09/1998-08/2002 – Ph.D., Brno University of Technology, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Communication, Electrotechnics and Automation, doctoral thesis title: Proximity Laser Scanner Cross-Correlation Based Methods for Cooperative Self-Localization and Map Building. ISCED 6.09/1993-06/1998 – Ing. (MSc.), Brno University of Technology, Technical University of Denmark, Lyngby, Electrotechnics and Autimation, thesis title: Antagonistic Control, ISCED 5A. PROFESSIONAL INTERESTS: Mobile robotics – durable robots, human-to-robot interfaces, visual telepresence, multispectral datafusion, indoor and outdoor selflocalisation and navigation, robot sensors, Bioengineering – optical body scanning, biofeedback, virtual/augmented reality in rehabilitation. IMPORTANT PUBLICATIONS: See https://www.vutbr.cz/lide/ludek-zalud-2815/publikace. IMPORATANT PROJECTS: CASSANDRA – Heterogeneous Mobile Robotic System, ORPHEUS-AC2 – military robot for chemical contamination and radiation measurement, ORPHEUS-X3 – civilian mobile robot for research and development.

Fumin Zhang

TECHNICAL COMMITTEE
Dr. Fumin Zhang is Associate Professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He received a PhD degree in 2004 from the University of Maryland (College Park) in Electrical Engineering, and held a postdoctoral position in Princeton University from 2004 to 2007. His research interests include mobile sensor networks, maritime robotics, control systems, and theoretical foundations for cyber-physical systems. He received the NSF CAREER Award in September 2009, the Lockheed Inspirational Young Faculty Award in March 2010, the ONR Young Investigator Program Award in April 2010, and the GT Roger P. Webb Outstanding Junior Faculty Award in April 2011. He is currently serving as the co-chair for the IEEE RAS Technical Committee on Marine Robotics, and the chair for the IEEE CSS Technical Committee on Robotic Control and Manufacturing Automation.