Upcoming SPS Webinar! 4 October 2018: 40 Years of Tracking for Radar Systems: A Cross-Disciplinary Academic and Industrial Viewpoint

Webinar Topic: "40 Years of Tracking for Radar Systems: A Cross-Disciplinary Academic and Industrial Viewpoint"

Speakers: 
Dr. Alfonso Farina
Visiting Professor at UCL Department Electronics, Cranfield University. 
Consultant Land & Naval Systems Division,
Leonardo Company, Rome, Italy

Dr. Giorgio Battistelli and Dr. Luigi Chisci
Dipartimento di Ingegneria dell’Informazione
Università degli Studi di Firenze, Italy

Date: Thursday, 4 October, 2018
Time: 11:00 am EDT (New York, GMT-04:00)
Duration: Approximately 1 hour
Register: Attendee Registration

Abstract:
This webinar will provide an in-depth survey look into 40 years of cross-disciplinary academic and industrial research and development work on radar tracking systems, starting from the former implementations based on the α – β, the Kalman filter, and up to the modern implementations based on random set filters. The webinar will cover the following topics:

• Importance and challenges of radar tracking
• Interaction between industry and academia
• The role of radar
• The role of target tracking and system baseline
• Retracing the evolution of tracking algorithms
• A taste of tracking filters
• Focus on data association
• Multi-sensor systems
• Modern random set tracking
• Performance evaluation and lessons learned
• Several system applications
• Conclusions and the future

This webinar is based on the paper presented at the ICCAIS 2017 conference, whose proceedings are now available on IEEE Xplore® at https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8217557/.

Speakers Biography: 

Alfonso Farina (Life Fellow, IEEE, Fellow, IET, FREng, Fellow of EURASIP) received the degree in Electronic Engineering from the University of Rome (IT) in 1973. In 1974, he joined Selenia, then Selex ES, where he became Director of the Analysis of Integrated Systems Unit and subsequently Director of Engineering of the Large Business Systems Division. In 2012, he was Senior VP and Chief Technology Officer of the company, reporting directly to the President. From 2013 to 2014, he was senior advisor to the CTO. He retired in October 2014.

From 1979 to 1985, he was also professor of “Radar Techniques” at the University of Naples (IT). He is the author of more than 800 peer-reviewed technical publications and of books and monographs (published worldwide), some of them also translated in to Russian and Chinese. Some of the most significant awards he has received include: (2004) Leader of the team that won the First Prize of the first edition of the Finmeccanica Award for Innovation Technology, out of more than 330 submitted projects by the Companies of Finmeccanica Group; (2005) International Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, U.K., and the fellowship was presented to him by HRH Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh; (2010) IEEE Dennis J. Picard Medal for Radar Technologies and Applications for “Continuous, Innovative, Theoretical, and Practical Contributions to Radar Systems and Adaptive Signal Processing Techniques”; (2012) Oscar Masi award for the AULOS® “green” radar by the Italian Industrial Research Association (AIRI); (2014) IET Achievement Medal for “Outstanding contributions to radar system design, signal, data and image processing, and data fusion.” He is a Visiting Professor at University College London (UCL), Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, CTIF (Center for TeleInFrastructures) Industry Advisory Chair, and a Distinguished Lecturer (DL) of IEEE Aerospace and Electronic Systems Society.
 
Dr. Farina has received the following awards:
(2017) IEEE SPS Industrial Leader Award for contributions to radar array processing and industrial leadership. 
(2017) Chair of Italy Section Chapter, AES10.
(Jan 2018-Dec2019) IEEE Signal Processing Society 2018, Distinguished Industry Lecturer.
(Jan 2019-Dec 2021) Member of the IEEE AESS BoG.
Main received best paper awards: B. Carlton of IEEE – Trans. on AES (2001, 2003, and 2013), IET – Proc. on Radar Sonar and Nav. (2009-2010) and Int. Conf. on Fusion (2004, 2009).
(2018): Associate Editor, IEEE Signal Processing Magazine.
(2018-2019): Visiting professor at Cranfield University, UK.
He is consultant to Leonardo S.p.A. “Land & Naval Defence Electronics Division”, Rome (I).

See also: "A Conversation with a Friend: Alfonso Farina,” interviewer: Fulvio Gini, IEEE Aerosp. Electron. Syst. Mag., June 2016, pp. 41-49, IEEE Aerospace and Electronic Systems Society.

Giorgio Battistelli received the Laurea degree in electronic engineering and the Ph.D. degree in robotics from the University of Genoa, Genoa, Italy, in 2000 and 2004, respectively.

From 2004 to 2006, he was a Research Associate with the Dipartimento di Informatica, Sistemistica e Telematica, University of Genoa. Since 2006, he has been with the University of Florence, Florence, Italy, where he is currently an Associate Professor of automatic control with the Dipartimento di Ingegneria dell’Informazione.

In 2014, he received the national scientific qualification (abilitazione scientifica nazionale) as Full Professor of Automatic Control. In the past years, he has taught courses in the areas of System Identification, System Theory and Automatic Control both at the University of Genoa and at the University of Florence. He has been advisor of over 10 Ph.D. students and supervisor of more than 70 Bachelor's and Master's degree dissertations. He is author of over 100 research papers in international journals or conference proceedings, spanning several diversified fields, and inventor of an international patent. In particular, his research interests include: adaptive and learning systems, real-time control reconfiguration, linear and nonlinear estimation, hybrid systems, sensor networks, data fusion, and large-scale systems. 

Dr. Battistelli is the co-recipient of four awards at the International Conference on Information Fusion in the 2009, 2012, 2013, and 2018, and of the best paper award at the 10th Workshop: Sensor Data Fusion: Trends, Solutions, Applications in the year 2015. He was a member of the editorial boards of the IFAC Journal Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence and of the IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems. He is currently an Associate Editor of the IFAC Journal Nonlinear Analysis: Hybrid Systems, and a member of the conference editorial boards of IEEE Control Systems Society and the European Control Association.
 

Luigi Chisci was born in 1959. He received the M.S. degree in electrical engineering in 1984 from the University of Florence and the Ph.D. degree in systems engineering in 1989 from the University of Bologna. Since 2004, he has been a full professor at the University of Florence, Italy, since 2004.

His educational and research career have been in the area of control and systems engineering. His research interests include adaptive control and signal processing; algorithms and architectures for real-time control and signal processing, recursive identification, filtering and estimation, and predictive control. His current interests mainly concern networked estimation, multi-agent systems, multi-target tracking, and distributed data fusion. He has coauthored over 180 papers, with more than 60 papers appearing in international journals.

Dr. Chisci is associate editor of the International Journal of Adaptive Control and Signal Processing. He is coordinator of the Ph.D. Program in Information Engineering and also of the Master Program in Electrical and Automation Engineering. He is Senior Member of IEEE.