Haptically Enabled Robotics and Tele-operations have the potential to dramatically improve access to diagnostic tools for world citizens living in regional and remote parts of a country, either not serviced by, or with limited access to, medical resources. Combining robots with a remote sense of touch and having human on the loop, the systems will provide true tele-presence for applications such as haptic based minimally invasive surgery and remote robotic based medical imaging, to other types of non-medical applications such as; mining, nuclear, Defence and extraterrestrial type activities and experimentations. This talk will highlight key enabling technologies that have been developed and successfully tested. It will also demonstrate how this could be a main driver in creating new capability for future new applications.

Saeid Nahavandi received his BSc (Hons), MSc and PhD in Control Engineering from Durham University, UK in 1985, 1986 and 1991 respectively. Saeid is an Alfred Deakin Professor, Pro Vice-Chancellor and the Director for the Institute for Intelligent Systems Research and Innovation at Deakin University in Australia. Professor Nahavandi is a Fellow member of IEEE, IET and IEAust. He has published over 800 refereed papers and been awarded over 50 competitive grants over the past 30 years. He received the Research collaboration / initiatives award from Japan and Prince & Princess of Wales Science Award and two Life time Achievements Awards. Saeid won the title of Young Engineer of the Year Award in 1996 and holds six patents, two of which have resulted in two very successful start-ups (Universal Motion Simulator Pty Ltd and FLAIM Systems Pty Ltd). In 2002 Professor Nahavandi served as a consultant to the Jet Propulsion Lab (NASA) during his visit to JPL Labs in Pasadena, California. Saeid has carried out industry based research with several major international companies such as Airbus, Boeing, Bosch, Ford Motor Company, General Motors, General Dynamics, Holden, Lockheed Martin, Nissan, Thales and Vestas just to name a few. Professor Nahavandi is the General Chair for IEEE SMC 2021. He was also the General Co-Chair for IEEE SMC 2011. He holds the positions of Senior Associate Editor: IEEE Systems Journal, Associate Editor: IEEE Transaction on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics: Systems, Editor-In-Chief for IEEE SMC Magazine, Chair: IEEE SMC Electronic Communications Subcommittee and founding Chair: IEEE SMC Victorian Chapter. Saeid is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering (FTSE).

Quantum technology is a promising future technology, and quantum cybernetics provides a framework for a fundamental and interdisciplinary investigation on the role of quantum effects on regulating quantum and classical systems and developing new quantum technology. In this talk, we will introduce several results on state estimation, parameter identification, robust control and machine learning in quantum technology. First, an efficient method of linear regression estimation (LRE) is presented for quantum state tomography. Second, we present a couple of results on quantum Hamiltonian identification and Hamiltonian identifiability. Then, we will present some results on robust control of quantum systems. Lastly, we give a brief introduction to quantum machine learning.

Daoyi Dong is currently a Scientia Associate Professor at the University of New South Wales, Canberra, Australia, and he is also an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow. He was with the Chinese Academy of Sciences and with the Zhejiang University. He had visiting positions at Princeton University, NJ, USA, RIKEN, Wako-Shi, Japan and The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany. He received a B.E. degree in automatic control and a Ph.D. degree in engineering from the University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, China, in 2001 and 2006, respectively. His research interests include quantum cybernetics and machine learning. He was awarded an ACA Temasek Young Educator Award by The Asian Control Association and is a recipient of an International Collaboration Award, Discovery International Award and an Australian Post-Doctoral Fellowship from the Australian Research Council, and Humboldt Research Fellowship from Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Germany. He is also a co-recipient of Guan Zhao-Zhi Award at the 34th Chinese Control Conference, and the Best Theory Paper Award at the 11th World Congress on Intelligent Control and Automation. He serves as an Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems. He has also served as General Chair or Program Chair for several international conferences, and is a Member-at-Large of Board of Governors, IEEE Systems, Man and Cybernetics Society. He has published 95 journal papers in leading journals including Nature Human Behaviour, Physical Review Letters, IEEE Transactions, and Automatica, more than 50 conference paper, and one book. He has attracted a number of competitive grants with more than AU$2.8 million from Australia, USA, China and Germany.