MODERATOR

Prof. Ümit Özgüner, the Ohio State University, CAR-IT (Darpa Urban Challenge)

Umit Ozguner is Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Ohio State University and holds the T.R.C. Inc. Chair on Intelligent Transportation Research. His areas of research interest are in intelligent mobile systems, decentralization and autonomy issues, applied automotive control and ITS. Professor Özgüner was the first President of the IEEE ITS Council. He participated in the organization of many conferences and was the Program Chair for the 1997 IEEE ITS Conference, the General Chair of the 2002 IEEE CDC in Las Vegas and the 2003 IEEE IV Symposium. The team he coordinated participated successfully in the 1997 Automated Highway Demonstration in San Diego (Demo'97), where they demonstrated 3 fully automated cars doing lane-keeping, convoying and passing using radar and vision based guidance. He has recently been working on airborne detection and tracking of mobile ground based systems for both military and civilian applications. His team also recently developed the autonomous off road truck TerraMax, which participated in the 2004 DARPA Grand Challenge.

PANELISTS

Prof. Levent Güvenç, İstanbul Technical University Mekar Labs and Autocom Center, Turkey (IV Research/deployment in Turkey)

Levent Güvenç received the B.S. degree in mechanical engineering from Boğaziçi University in Istanbul, in 1985, the M.S. degree in mechanical engineering from Clemson University in 1988 and the Ph.D. degree in mechanical engineering from the Ohio State University in 1992. Since 1996, he has been working in the mechanical engineering department of Istanbul Technical University where he is currently a professor of mechanical engineering and director of the Mekar Mechatronics Research Lab and the EU FP6 funded Autocom Automotive Controls and Mechatronics Research Center. He spent the year 2000 working as a guest researcher sponsored by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in the Institute of Robotics and Mechatronics of the German Aerospace Center in Oberpfaffenhofen. Prof. Guvenc has organized several seminars, special sessions, panels and workshops on automotive control systems. He is a member of the IFAC technical committees on automotive control (second term) and mechatronics (first term) and the IEEE technical committee on automotive control (second term). He was a member of the program committees of the first and second IFAC Symposia on Automotive Control. He has more than 80 technical publications in controls, robotics, and mechatronics, and is one of the coauthors of the book Robust Control: the Parameter Space Approach. His current research interests concentrate on automotive control and mechatronics, helicopter stability and control, mechatronics and applied robust control.

Prof. Sadayuki Tsugawa, Meijo University, Japan (IV Research/deployment in Japan)

He got bachelor degree, master degree, and doctor degree from University of Tokyo in 1968, 1970, and 1973 respectively. In 1973 He joined Mechanical Engineering Laboratory under Ministry of International Trade and Industry. In 2003 He moved to Meijo University. His interests are in ITS and, in particular, vehicle control and its fundamental technologies including control and communications.

Prof. Tadao Saito, CTO and Chief Scientist, Toyota InfoTechnology Center, Japan (Vehicle to Vehicle Communications)

Dr. Tadao Saito received the Ph. D degree in electronics from the University of Tokyo in 1968. Since then he was a lecture, an associate professor and a professor of the University of Tokyo, where he is now a Professor Emeritus. Since June 2001, he is a professor of Chuo University and the Chief Scientist and CTO of Toyota InfoTechnology Center, where he studies future ubiquitous information services around automobile.
He worked in variety of subjects related to digital communication and computer networks. His research includes variety of communication networks and its social applications such as ITS. He is the chairman of Ubiquitous Networking Forum of Japan working for future vision of information society. He is also the chairman of Next Generation IP Network Promotion Forum of Japan. He wrote two books on electronic circuitry, four books on computer and two books on digital communication and multimedia.
From 1998 to 2002 he was the chairman of Telecommunication Business Committee of the Telecommunication Council of Japanese government and contributed to regulatory policy of telecommunication business for broadband network deployment in Japan. He is also the Japanese representative of International Federation of Information Processing General Assembly and Technical Committee 6 (Communication System). He is a fellow of IEEE and honorary member and fellow of IEICEJ.

Prof. Gerd Wanielik, Chemnitz University of Technology, Germany (Sensor Fusion for Intelligent Vehicles)

Gerd Wanielik received his diploma in 1979 from the Technical University of Darmstadt (Germany) and his Ph.D. in 1988 from the Technical University of Karlsruhe (Germany), all in electrical engineering. From 1979 he has worked as a scientist at the AEG-Telefunken Research Institute and later at the Daimler Chrysler Research Center. Since 1999 he is Professor of Communication Engineering at the Chemnitz University of Technology (Germany). His research interests include multi sensor processing and systems, polarimetry, communication and navigation systems. He is a senior member of the IEEE, member of the ITG and DGON. He received the ITG Award in 1991 and the Daimler Chrysler Research Award in 1997.