Abstracts of Plenary and Distinguished Speakers

Pinning Control and Controllability of Complex Networks

Guanrong (Ron) Chen, City University of Hong Kong

In this talk, I will first briefly review the notion of pinning control for complex dynamical networks. Then, I will discuss in more detail the controllability of networked MIMO (multi-input/multi-output) LTI (linear time-invariant) dynamical systems, for which both structural controllability and state controllability will be discussed, with necessary and/or sufficient conditions presented.

Professor Chen is Fellow of the IEEE (1997), Member of the Academy of Europe (2014) and Fellow of The World Academy of Sciences (2015). He was conferred Honorary Doctorate by the Saint Petersburg State University, Russia (2011) and the University of Le Havre, France (2014), and was awarded the 2011 Euler Gold Medal by the Russian Euler Foundation.

Technologies and Equipment Development of High Power Electromagnetic Stirring and Electromagnetic Heating

An Luo, Hunan University, China

Technologies and equipment development of high power electromagnetic stirring and electromagnetic heating is the key technologies to improve the steel quality and decrease the energy consumption, which is the hot issue of the frontier research. A number of core technologies are broken through after decades of research. The industrializing and engineering applications are successfully realized. Many achievements lead international similar products. These following scientific innovations and engineering applications are carried out. Electromagnetic stirring system innovation: (1) Slotless stirring roller and magnetic field orientation control (2)High power electromagnetic energy bidirectional fast conversion control (3) Multi-stirring rollers synchronous stirred control. Electromagnetic Heating System innovation: (1) High power variable frequency supply with constant temperature control (2)Double channels tundish with eddy current partition technology (3) Electric insulation handling and composite cooling technology. The developed electromagnetic stirring and electromagnetic heating system have been applied to more than 160 iron and steel enterprises at home and abroad. Domestic market share of electromagnetic stirring system is 70%. The share of electromagnetic heating system is 100% in China. Energy saving is significant and economic benefits is notable. The cumulative benefit was up to 1.53 billion in terms of 8 iron and steel enterprises. And it was exported to Europe, the Middle East, South America, Asia and so on.

An Luo received Ph.D. at Zhejiang University in 1993. Thereafter, he studied in electric power converter and control at the Duisburg University in German and the Bristol University in Britain. Prof. Luo is the Member of the Chinese National Academy of Engineering, the professor of Hunan University, the director of the National Electric Power Conversion and Control Engineering Technology Research Center, the Senior Member of IEEE Power electrics society. Prof. Luo has developed a wide range of groundbreaking power electronics technologies with measurable and lasting impacts to steel, copper, and other metallurgical industries and electricity infrastructures in China. His work has fundamentally transformed the metallurgical industries and electricity infrastructure in China. He received the Delta Scholar Award, He won Ho Leung Ho Lee Award for Scientific and Technological Progress in 2015. He also won the China National Technology Innovation Award (Second Prize) in 2014, China National Science and Technology Progress Awards (Second Prize) two times in 2010 and 2006, WIPO-SIPO Award for Chinese Outstanding Patented Invention in 2014.

Hybrid control of nonlinear dynamical systems with distributed delays

Xinzhi Liu, University of Waterloo, Canada

This talk discusses hybrid control of nonlinear systems with distributed delays. The problem of stabilization is studied by using impulsive control and switching control. Stabilizing impulsive forces as well as destabilizing disturbance impulses are considered. Verifiable sufficient conditions are established which guarantee the asymptotic or exponential stability of switched and impulsive systems with distributed delays. Results are found for when the impulses are applied at pre-specified times or at the switching instances. The criteria found are based on a special type of state-dependent switching rule which partitions the state space into stabilizing subregions.

Professor Liu received the Ph.D. degree in applied mathematics from University of Texas, Arlington, USA in 1988. After spending two years as a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the University of Alberta, he joined the Department of Applied Mathematics, University of Waterloo, Canada, as an Assistant Professor in 1990, where he became an Associate Professor with tenure in 1994 and a Full Professor in 1997. His research areas include systems analysis, stability theory, hybrid dynamical systems, impulsive control, neural networks, infectious models, and communication security. He is the author or co-author of 2 research monographs and over 300 research articles.

Bioinspired Neurodynamics based Approaches with Applications to Various Complex Systems

Simon X. Yang, University of Guelph, Canada

Studies of neurodynamics systems have made significant progress in both understanding the biological intelligence and applying to diversified complex systems for information acquisition, analysis and control systems. In this talk, I will start with a very brief introduction to advanced neurodynamics based technologies. After that, several start-of-the-art research works on bioinspired neurodynamics based approaches for information acquisition, information processing and control technology in complex engineering systems will be presented, such as intelligent real-time monitoring and control of livestock odors using novel electronic noses and wireless sensor networks; real-time sensing, path planning, and control of harvesting robots, and intelligent classification of tobacco and orange growing areas by using near-infrared spectra.

Professor Yang received the B.Sc. degree in engineering physics from Beijing University, China, in 1987, the first of his two M.Sc. degrees in biophysics from Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China, in 1990, the second M.Sc. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Houston, USA, in 1996, and the Ph.D. degree in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada, in 1999. He joined the University of Guelph in Canada in August 1999. Currently he is a Professor and the Head of the Advanced Robotics and Intelligent Systems (ARIS) Laboratory at the University of Guelph. Professor Yang’s research expertise is in the area of intelligent systems, robotics, sensors and signal processing, multi-sensor fusion, wireless sensor networks, intelligent control, and computational neuroscience. Professor Yang serves as the Editor-in-Chief of International Journal of Robotics and Automation, an Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Cybernetics and several other journals. He has involved in the organization of many conferences. He is the General Chair of the 2011 IEEE International Conference on Logistics and Automation.

Complex Network of Neuronal Reaction-Diffusion systems: Long-time Behavior, Synchronization and Self-organization

M.A. Aziz-Alaoui, Normandie Université, France

After a general introduction on Complex systems, interaction networks and synchronization of dynamical systems, we focus on the long time behavior of complex networks of reaction-diffusion (RD) systems. We prove the existence of the global attractor and a L^{\infty}-bound for a network of n RD systems with d variables each. This allows us to prove the identical synchronization for general class of networks and establish the existence of a coupling strength threshold value that ensures such a synchronization. We then apply these results to some particular networks with different structures (i.e. different topologies) and perform numerical simulations. We found out theoretical and numerical heuristic laws for the minimal coupling strength for synchronization relatively to the number of nodes and the network topology, and discuss the link between spatial dimension and synchronization.

M.A. Aziz-Alaoui is full Professor of Applied Mathematics in Le Havre, Normandie University, France. He obtained the Ph.D. degree in mathematics at the University of Nice, France. In 1991 he was employed as associate-professor in the university of Le Havre. In 2001, he received the Habilitation of Applied Mathematics from the University of Le Havre, where he is currently the director of the Laboratory of Applied Mathematics (LMAH) and of the head of the research team "Dynamical and Bio-complex Systems, Evolution Problems". He is the former vice-president of this university, for research and PhD program, and vice-president of Normandie university. His current research interests in nonlinear dynamics include chaos theory and bifurcation, synchronization, complex systems, and bio or ecological modeling (PDE or ODE). Currently, he is especially interested in biology (neuroscience, ecosystems, epidemiology) modeling and in the relationship between chaos-synchronization and complex systems and in the understanding of self-organization and emergent properties arising from natural and artificial systems. He organized conferences and workshops on these topics, and contributed to many international conferences organizations. He is co-editor of two books in Springer Verlag "Understanding Complex Systems" series, and many conferences proceedings. He founded, with another colleague, the Institute of Complex Systems in Normandy (http://isc-n.fr/), the third node of the French National Network on Complex Systems (http://rnsc.fr/) which is a node of the International Complex System Society (http://www.cssociety.org/). He is the co-editor in chief of the international Journal of Nonlinear Systems and Application (JNSA : www.watam.org/JNSA/), and is or has been associate-editor for various math.journals, as well as Visiting Fellowships or invited professor in many universities (China, WTU, City-Univ-Hong-Kong, Beijing-NAS, Waterloo-Ontario-Canada, USA-Maryland, India IIT-Roorkee, Morocco, Tunisia, EAU-Dubai, Cameroon ...).

Rail Transit Energy Internet

Jianghua Feng , CRRC Zhuzhou Institute Co.,Ltd., China

With a rapid development of the rail transit, the issues of a large amount of energy consumption, serious emission, noise pollution and so forth are increasingly the focus of social attention. The rail transit system is facing a severe challenge. The State Planning of Made in China 2015, Industry Internet, and Information Industry Fusion provide a guideline for rail transit, which is called as Rail Transit Energy Internet (RTEI). Learning from internet concept, adopting information communication technology (ICT) and intelligent methodology gentrifies subversively the rail transit development pattern to realize energy information fusion and develop a high efficiency and clean energy internet which operates in an intelligent way of energy consumption, transmission and providing. Firstly, an investigation of the current energy efficiency situation of domestic will be made. Then, this talk deeply describes the academic connotation, fundamental architecture, benefits, uniqueness and technology chain of RTEI. Moreover, the crucial technologies of RTEI will be put forward from three aspects: component level, device level and system level. The technical characteristics, technical elements are to be introduced in detail. Finally, the vision of future development trend is to be presented. We hope this discussion provide a reference for RIEI of China.

Mr. Feng holds PhD degree in engineering and professor level senior engineer. He began to serve as the director of R&D center and the vice chief engineer of CSR Zhuzhou Institute from Apr. 2002 to Dec. 2004. After that, he became the CTO of Zhuzhou CSR Times Electric Co., Ltd from Jan. 2005 to Dec. 2007. And then, he held the post as the vice president and CTO of Zhuzhou CSR Electric Co., Ltd form Dec. 2007 to Dec. 2009 and vice general manager and chief engineer of CSR Zhuzhou Institute from Jan. 2010 to Nov. 2015. Currently, he serves as the director, vice general manager and chief engineer of CRRC Zhuzhou Institute. Dr. Feng mainly focuses on electric drive, automatic control theory and the advanced application of power electronic and modern control technology in rail transit field. He has directed over 30 national and provincial scientific research projects, published more than 50 professional papers, and drafted out 2 state standards and 1 international standard. As the first inventor, Dr. Feng has already been authorized 51 patents. He also won numbers of honors including the Youth Technology Talent of the Ministry of Railway, the Locomotive Medal of the National Railway Locomotive Federation of Trade Unions, Mao Yisheng Science & Technology Award, the Central Enterprises Labor Model Honorary title, and the Contemporary inventor.

Analysis and control of complex smart grids based on multi-agent networks

Zhi-Hong Guan, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China

The intelligentialize and automation of smart grids and the large-scale integration of renewable energy are key technologies for overcoming the crisis of energy security and environmental degradation. The high demands on the intelligentialize and automation of smart grids and the large-scale integration of renewable energy make the control and regulation of current power grids more challenging, and provide advantageous chances for the development of smart grids. The future smart grid has been required to contain the following properties: completely market-oriented regulation, thousands of intelligent terminals, which make the distributed coordination and interaction technologies for multi-agent systems the inevitable choice for the future smart grid. This report focus on the economic dispatch and multiple line-outage detection problems on smart grids, provides the recent results of our research group, on detection, control and optimization of smart grids via multi-agent technologies.

Zhi-Hong Guan received the Ph.D. degree in automatic control theory and applications from the South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, China, in 1994.He has been with Huazhong University of Science and Technology since 1997 where he is at present a Huazhong Leading Professor. He was a Full Professor of mathematics and automatic control with the Jianghan Petroleum Institute, Jingzhou, China, in 1994. Since 1999, he has held visiting positions at Harvard University, USA, the Central Queensland University, Australia, the Loughborough University, U.K., the National University of Singapore, the University of Hong Kong, and the City University of Hong Kong. Currently, he is an Associate Editor of the Journal of Control Theory and Applications, the International Journal of Nonlinear Systems and Application, the Journal of Applied Mathematics, and serves as a Member of the Committee of Control Theory of the Chinese Association of Automation. His research interests include nonlinear systems and complex networks, impulsive and hybrid control systems, networked control systems, multi-agent systems, networked robotic systems, complex smart grids and genetic regulatory networks.

Complex Dynamics in Biological Systems Arising from Multiple Limit Cycles Bifurcation

Pei Yu, Western University, Canada

In this talk, we present several biological systems to study complex dynamical behaviors arising from multiple limit cycles bifurcation. We will show that due to Hopf bifurcation the exact routes to new patterns of dynamics including bistability and tristability can occur, giving rise to co-existence of stable equilibria and stable periodic solutions, or even co-existence of two stable periodic motions. These solutions may more realistically describe the real behaviour of the system. Bifurcation theory and normal form theory are applied to determine the number and stability of bifurcating limit cycles.

Pei Yu is currently a Professor in the Department of Applied Mathematics,Western University, Canada. He received his B.Sc. degree from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, and M.A.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees from University of Waterloo. Professor Yu's main research interests include nonlinear and chaotic dynamical systems, stability and bifurcation, computation of differential equations, biological mathematics and applications. He (as an author or a co-author) has published 3 monographs, over 190 refereed journal articles. He is a member of editorial board of several international journals. Professor Yu received a Premier's Research Excellence Award of Ontario. He is Guest Professors of several universities.