Prof. Dan Zhang (Keynote Speaker) Fellow of CAE, EIC, ASME, CSME York University, Canada	Keynote Lecture: Reconfigurable Robotic Systems and Applications Abstract: Robotics provides transformative technologies for all aspects of human lives from manufacturing, education, entertainment, healthcare and medical systems. Nevertheless, it is an open technology that continues to evolve for higher accuracy, speed, reliability, robustness, resilience and sustainability. In particular, the attributes of resilience and sustainability have only received growing attentions recently. Robotics is also a highly interdisciplinary technology which integrates knowledge from many fields including mechanical engineering, electronics engineering, and informatics. One of the most significant challenges this technology faces today is to develop technologies for the new attributes (such as sustainability) of a robotic system. However, system sustainability can be achieved by reconfiguration and decentralization, whose system configurations are evolved with the changes of design requirements and dynamic environment. The modular construction of parallel robotic machines allows them to achieve this objective and generate a class of reconfigurable robotic structures. In this talk, the parallel robotic system and its characteristics will be presented and discussed. Based on the modular structure of parallel robotic system, reconfigurable robots are generated and their potential applications such as 3D printer, machine tools and mobile modular rescue robots etc. are demonstrated.
Prof. Feng Gao (Keynote Speaker) Director of the state key laboratory of Mechanical System and Vibration Shanghai Jiaotong University, China	Keynote Lecture: Supper Large Parallel Robots for the Ground-based Simulation Equipment of the Real Space Collision and Operation Dynamic Process Abstract: The dynamic collisions are the typical physical phenomena for spacecraft rendezvous and docking, space robot operation, interplanetary spacecraft landing, rocket landing, and so on. The ground-based simulation equipment of the real space collision and operation dynamic process is the foundation of development of the space operation systems mentioned above. This speech will introduce our research on both mechanism design and real time control of the supper large parallel robots for the ground-based simulation equipment of the real space collision and operation dynamic process, which is the ground-based semi-physical simulator of space collision and operation dynamic process. The main contents are the key science and technological problems, including the design of the supper large 9-DOF parallel robots for the space collision and operation dynamic semi-physical simulator, the equipment dynamics parameter matching (e.g., stiffness, mode and frequency), distortion modeling and compensation methods of the semi-physical simulation system, and real-time control system and control algorithms and so on. The supper large 9-DOF parallel robots developed by us is the one that cannot be replaced for the simulation of space collision and operation dynamic process as well as the verification of the effectiveness and feasibility of the docking and operation mechanisms in China's Manned Spaceflight, space station project, and so on.
Prof. Rong Xiong (Keynote Speaker) Leader of the Robotics Laboratory at Institute of Cyber-Systems and Control Zhejiang University, China	Keynote Lecture:Research on Intelligent Mobility and Manipulation Abstract: Mobility and manipulation are two essential functions for robot applications. In the industrial scenarios, mobile robots and manipulators have been widely used. As the scenes are fully pre-defined and static, the mobile robots generally move along the fixed guidance markers and the manipulators operates repeatedly to the fixed positions or trajectories programmed offline, ensuring the accuracy and reliability of the operation. However, along with the development demand of robot application in various fields, the scenes become open, which brings great challenges for robots to complete tasks autonomously with high accuracy and reliability. This talk will introduce the technique challenges faced for robot movement and manipulation in the opening scenes, and report our work on the issues on intelligent perception, planning, control and learning, including the legged robot adapted to various terrains, visual SLAM adapted to various dynamics in environments, visual grasping adapted to various objects, learning from demonstration for various tasks, and mobile manipulation adapting to man-machine cooperation. Problems needed to be solved in the future will also be discussed.
Prof. Genci Capi (Keynote Speaker) Hosei University, Japan	Keynote Lecture: Socially assistive intelligent robots operating in human environments Abstract:The research on intelligent robots will produce robots that are able to operate in everyday life environments, to adapt their policy as environment changes, and to cooperate with other team members and humans. Operating in human environments the robots must be process in real time many sensory data such as vision, laser, microphone, in order to determine the best action. Learning and evolution have been proved to give good results generating a good mapping of various sensory data to robot action. In this talk, I will overview the existing efforts including our attempts at creating intelligent robots operating in everyday life environments. I will focus on remotely operating surveillance robot, robot navigation in urban environments, and assistive humanoid robot. I will show experimental results that demonstrate the effectiveness of proposed algorithms.
Prof. Yang Shi (Keynote Speaker) Fellow of IEEE, ASME, CSME University of Victoria, Canada	Keynote Lecture: Robust Stabilization of Bilateral Teleoperation for Robotics Abstract: As an efficient tool for remote sensing and manipulation, a bilateral tele-operator strives to synchronize its master and slave robots tightly, and to provide its human operator with useful haptic cues about the slave-environment interactions. Therefore, the bilateral teleoperation feedback loop includes the human who operates the master, the environment which interacts with the slave and the master-communications-slave system. This talk will firstly summarize the major challenges to tackle the bilateral teleoperation that is a nonlinear, time-varying and interconnected system with communication delays and uncertain user and environment dynamics. Further, a novel constructive dynamic interconnection and damping injection strategy for robust stabilization of bilateral teleoperation will be presented. Finally, some related ongoing research will be discussed.
Prof. Yongshun Zhang (Keynote Speaker) Dalian University of Technology, China	Invited Lecture: Capsule robot and magnetic Manipulation Abstract: Wireless capsule endoscopes (WCEs) are particularly useful to reach inaccessible regions with minimal patient discomfort precluded to standard probe endoscopy. However, their effectiveness is currently limited in some spacious spots of the gastrointestinal (GI) tract, because of their uncontrolled nature, which causes the capsule to miss regions of interest. With active locomotion and posture control, it is believed that the missing rate will be reduced greatly, even more attractive applications of WCEs, such as laser surgical operation and localized drug delivery, will be realized. Therefore, on the basis of a brief review of the development status of capsule robot systems and related fields, several scientific issues will be elaborated in this report by focusing on innovative driving principles of capsule robot systems in the GI tract, wireless energy transmission, visual positioning, and human-machine interactive control based on vision and magnetic field integration, and related future trends will be prospected.
Prof. Xianbo Xiang (Invited Speaker) Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China	Invited Lecture: Intelligent composite steering of underwater vehicle with redundant control surfaces Abstract: Intelligent steering of unmanned underwater vehicle is a classic control problem, yet challenges stand out while facing the submerged body fitted with multiple redundant control surfaces in order to achieve good hydrodynamic performance. In this talk, two types of underwater vehicles with multiple redundant control surfaces in both bow and stern planes are introduced. The advancements in the intelligent composite steering of underwater vehicles with redundant control surfaces in the diving plane are highlighted, by assigning the depth error and the related pitch error to the bow and stern rudders respectively and considering the coupling heave and pitch effects simultaneously, which overcome the shortcomings of the traditional depth control of the underwater vehicle resulted by independent steering of the bow or stern rudder. Subsequently, robust steering controller is achieved by employing the sliding mode control design for two types of underwater vehicles. One case is the open-framed underwater towing vehicle with multiple rudders which is passively driven by the towing cable, and the other case is the torpedo-shaped underwater vehicle with bow and stern rudders which is actively actuated by the main propeller. Numerical simulations are performed to demonstrate the intelligent composite steering strategy. Finally, experiments in water for some underwater vehicles with multiple redundant control surfaces are conducted to close the loop of the proposed intelligent composite steering from theory to practice.
Prof. Xianping Fu (Invited Speaker) Dalian Maritime University, China	Invited Lecture: Visual perception and target grabbing of underwater fishing robots Abstract: In recent years, with the development of robots and drones, the research on underwater fishing robot platforms, motion, and control attracts considerable attention, but the visual perception ability, autonomous grasping ability and autonomous recycle of underwater robots are still the challenging problems that the underwater robot needs to solve urgently. This report mainly introduces our explorations and discoveries for accurate perception and recognition of underwater small targets, autonomous grasping, prototype development of underwater fishing robots, etc.
Prof. Hongde Qin (Invited Speaker) Harbin Engineering University, China	Invited Lecture: Prescribed Performance Control Method for AUV Abstract: In recent years, autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) has been widely applied in the fields of marine environmental monitoring and military intelligence gathering. It is intended to provide scientists and researchers with simple and low-cost  medium and long-range and appropriate time response capability to implement different functions. These underwater vehicles are required to execute different types of missions without the interaction of human operators while performing well under a variety of load conditions and with unknown sea currents. Motion control systems for AUV have been an active field of research. Modern control systems are based on a variety of design techniques such as PID control, sliding mode control, fuzzy systems, neural networks control, and prescribed performance control, to mention only a few. Trajectory tracking is a fundamental element of the AUV control system. However, highly nonlinear and cross-coupled characteristics of system dynamics, model uncertainties introduced by unpredictable underwater environment, and external disturbances bring challenges for the AUV control algorithms design. In addition, according to the complicated missions, the requirement for the control precision will be further increased. The research results of traditional nonlinear control focus on the steady state performance of the system, but pay less attention to the transient performance. Against this background, Bechlioulis proposed a prescribed performance control method, which introduced performance function and corresponding error transformation to make convergence rate, overshoot, and tracking error obtain pre-established performances. In this report, we have considered the problem of the 6-DOFs AUV nonlinear systems with unknown nonlinearities, which is capable of allowing attributes such as maximum overshoot, a lower bound on the convergence rate, and maximum permissible steady state error to be formally specified via the performance functions. Make the prescribed performance characteristics as tracking error constraints, the key idea was to transform the constrained system into an equivalent unconstrained one, via an appropriately defined output error transformation. We have proved that stabilizing the unconstrained system is sufficient to solve the stated problem. This is critical property as it leads to the design of less complex control algorithms. This report mainly focuses on the application of prescribed performance control methods in the AUV field, including the development history, basic theory, and subsequent development of prescribed performance control. In addition, an AUV prescribed performance control case is introduced to elaborate the main design steps of the method. By comparing with other methods, the superiority of the prescribed performance control method is demonstrated.