Keynote Speakers

Distant water fishing vessels go far out in the sea for at least half a year before returning. Fishermen can easily be exploited by being forced to work for long hours onboard, with high work intensity. Working on real CCTV videos on fishing vessels from Taiwan, in this talk, we demonstrate how an on-vessel system can be designed to monitor fishermen working conditions using a combination of AI and statistical methods. To replace manual record of fishermen work hour attendance, we designed an on-vessel face recognition based work hour attendance system with both offline caching and online updating of attendance records. Further, we show how real-life videos can be very difficult to analyze and thus the monitoring system needs to consider different AI and statistical techniques to produce feasible results. Compared to the global fishing watch (GFW) satellite data that is popularly used for vessel monitoring worldwide, our on-vessel monitoring system, called Smart Observer, gives a more accurate estimation of the working hours of fishermen. Our work hour estimation error is within 30 minutes in a span of 24 hours, while that of GFW is around 90 minutes. We encourage future researchers to work on how to integrate on-vessel video data with satellite data for a much more accurate estimation.

The PV power generating system was cherished by the research fraternity as an exceptional source because of its ease of installation, negligible maintenance, and reduced greenhouse effect. Therefore, grid-tied solar PV systems are widely used for on-grid operation to provide pollution-free energy. These systems are connected to the utility grid with the help of power electronic converters with advanced controllers. Apart from that, while considering the intermittent nature of the PV generation system, single stage or double-stage static power electronics converter is used to interface the solar PV power at the point of common coupling (PCC) for satisfying the AC grid connection/code requirements. The single-stage PV system consists of only a three-phase VSI, but it requires a large number of solar PV arrays; hence researchers departed toward a double-stage solar PV system. Double stage solar PV system has a DC-DC asynchronous boost converter in continuous conduction mode as a source-side converter and a three-phase power PWM VSI module as a grid-side converter. Further, due to widespread use of non-linear electronic loads including adjustable AC drives causes power quality problems with high-frequency harmonics injection into the grid and degrades the quality of power. In contrast, an optimal PLL and its control strategy are still required to trigger the grid-side three-phase VSI, which will track the phase angle and estimates the grid frequency accurately.

Abstract to be announced

Since most natural resources are on the verge of being depleted, the world is concentrating on environmentally friendly technologies. Sustainable development is about forms of progress that combine economic development, social advancement, and environmental protection and is widely recognized by the public, private, and civic sectors as one of the major challenges for the 21st century. The current engineering education focuses solely on developing technologies to meet the demands of large consumer markets. On the other hand, there is a lack of emphasis placed on material sustainability, concern for the environment, greenhouse gases, and other forms of livelihood. Considering recent revelations about the state of the world's ecosystems, technological experts have begun advocating for policies that will protect the planet. Redesigning materials and products for circular use would boost innovation across different sectors of the economy. Learners in higher education are significant future stakeholders. Their enthusiasm as aspiring engineers, scientists, leaders, and decision-makers will make a difference. Positive change begins with awareness. Awareness empowers people to act. This presentation will raise awareness about the importance of engineering research and innovation by providing a more comprehensive understanding of sustainable development. 

The talk will look into how optimization plays a critical role to address the challenges in systems engineering. The presentation will further focus on multi-disciplinary optimization for systems thinking and also give a glimpse of generative engineering in exploration of product architectures and synthesis to avoid design fixation. A peek view into Siemens approach will be presented along with the MBSE offerings.

In the talk, I will present two of my research projects related to the development of innovative systems. The first one is centered on the field of oncology, addressing the critical challenge of multi-organ contouring (MOC) in the context of radiotherapy. Manual contouring of organs is currently a labor-intensive and time-consuming task during cancer treatment, with far-reaching implications for both patients and healthcare providers. In response, we have engineered an automatic contouring tool designed to alleviate the burdens on oncologists, streamline the workflow, and reduce scheduling delays caused by the rising cancer patient population.

In the second part, we delve into the realm of smart agriculture with a focus on pest control. We have devised a novel method that harnesses the power of everyday smartphones to monitor pest populations, particularly on lotus leaves. These pests, being mere millimeters in size, pose a significant challenge for traditional detection methods. To overcome this, we've ingeniously combined the YOLO network with a super-resolution model to vastly improve the performance of small object detection. This transformative approach has the potential to ease pest management in agriculture and enhance crop yields, contributing to sustainable and efficient farming practices.