Biography: Dr. Dimitrios A. Karras received his Diploma and M.Sc. Degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA), Greece in 1985 and the Ph. Degree in Electrical Engineering, from the NTUA, Greece in 1995, with honors. From 1990 and up to 2004 he collaborated as visiting professor and researcher with several universities and research institutes in Greece. Since 2004, after his election, he has been with the Sterea Hellas Institute of Technology, Automation Dept., Greece as associate professor in Digital Systems and Signal Processing, till 12/2018, as well as with the Hellenic Open University, Dept. Informatics as a visiting professor in Communication Systems (the latter since 2002 and up to 2010). Since 1/2019 is Associate Prof. in Digital and Intelligent Systems, Signal Processing, in National & Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece, School of Science, Dept. General as well as adjunct Assoc. Prof. Dr. with the EPOKA university (2018-2020), Computer Engineering Dept., Tirana and Arden Univ. UK (2021- ). He has published more than 70 research refereed journal papers in various areas of intelligent and distributed/multiagent systems, pattern recognition, image/signal processing and neural networks as well as in bioinformatics and more than 185 research papers in International refereed scientific Conferences. His research interests span the fields of intelligent and distributed systems, multiagent systems, pattern recognition and computational intelligence, image and signal processing and systems, biomedical systems, communications and networking as well as security. He has served as program committee member as well as program chair and general chair in several international workshops and conferences in the fields of signal, image, communication and automation systems. He is, also, former editor in chief (2008-2016) of the International Journal in Signal and Imaging Systems Engineering (IJSISE), academic editor in the TWSJ, ISRN Communications and the Applied Mathematics Hindawi journals as well as associate editor in various scientific journals, including CAAI, IET. He has been cited in more than 2390 research papers, his H/G-indices are 20/48 (Google Scholar) and his Erdos number is 5. His RG score is 31.42.

Abstract: Determination of a collision free path for a robot as well as an autonomous vehicle between start and goal positions through obstacles cluttered in a workspace or in a complex real world terrain is central to the design of an autonomous robot and autonomous vehicle path and motion planning. This tutorial presents an overview of autonomous vehicles and mobile robots path and motion planning focusing on algorithms that produce an optimal path for the robot or vehicle to navigate in a complex environment. To complete the navigation task, the algorithms will read the map of the environment or workspace and subsequently attempt to create free paths for the robot or autonomous vehicle to traverse in the workspace or the complex terrain without colliding with other vehicles, humans, animals, objects and obstacles. Appropriate or correct and suitable algorithms will fulfill its function fast enough, that is, to find an optimal path to traverse in, even if there are a large number of obstacles cluttered in the complex environment. To achieve this, various approaches in the design of algorithms used to develop an ideal path planning system for autonomous vehicles and mobile robots have been proposed by many researchers. Simulation and experimental results from previous research show that algorithms play an important role to produce an optimal path (short, smooth and robust) for successful autonomous navigation in near real time. This tutorial presents an overview and discusses the strength and weaknesses as well as the challenges regarding current path and motion planning algorithms.

Biography: Eriselda Goga is an Assistant Lecturer in Mathematics at Epoka University, Tirana, Albania. She received her master’s degree in Mathematics at the Faculty of Natural Sciences, University of Tirana. Eriselda has excellent research skills and has recently published a paper where a PDE problem is solved. Her research interests are focus on the analysis of partial differential equations and in the theory of electromagnetic wave scattering.

Abstract: This workshop introduces participants to a free software program called Freefem++. This programming language focuses on solving partial differential equations using the finite element method, and it allows to obtain quickly numerical results. In this workshop would be included the solution of some elliptic problems, the steps needed for solving them numerically, and in the end, we will work on a specific case. The goal is to introduce in a simple way this difficult (but very interesting in real-world applications) topic to engineers, researchers, professors and show them how helpful this might be for using it in their research.