Intelligent Robotic Systems

Dr. Raptis joined the faculty of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Massachusetts Lowell as an Assistant Professor in Fall 2012. He is the director of the Autonomous Robotic Systems Laboratory (ARSL). Dr. Raptis received his Dipl-Ing. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece and his Master of Science in Electrical and Computer Engineering from The Ohio State University in 2003 and 2006, respectively. In 2010 he received his Ph.D. degree in the department of Electrical Engineering at the University of South Florida. In the same year he joined the Intelligent Control Systems Laboratory (ICSL) and the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow. From October 2011 to August 2012 he had a joint appointment with ICSL and the Aerospace Systems Design Laboratory (ASDL) in the department of Aerospace Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. < Dr. Valavanis received the Diploma in Electrical and Electronic Engineering (5 years of study) in 1981 from the National Technical University of Athens (http://www.ntua.gr), Greece, and he completed the Professional Engineer (PE) exams in Electrical and Mechanical Engineering in February 1982. He received the M.Sc. degree in Electrical Engineering and the PhD degree in Computer and Systems Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) (http://www.rensselaer.edu) in 1984 and 1986, respectively. From 1987 to 1990 he held the Analog Devices Career Development Chair for Assistant Professors at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Northeastern University (http://www.northeastern.edu), Boston, where he was also Director of the Robotics Laboratory. From 1991 to 1999 he was with The Center for Advanced Computer Studies (CACS), University of Louisiana at Lafayette (http://www.cacs.louisiana.edu) where he served as Associate Professor(1991-1995) and Professor (since 1995) of Computer Engineering, as Associate Director for Research at the A-CIM Center (1993-1999) and as Director of the Robotics and Automation Laboratory. He also held the A-CIM/[TC]²/Regents Professorship in Manufacturing.From 1999-2003, he was Professor in the Department of Production Engineering and Management, Technical University of Crete (http://www.tuc.gr), Greece, where he also served as Director of the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems and Robotics, Director of the Graduate Program and Chair of the University Industrial Advisory Board. From 2003-August 2008 he was Professor at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of South Florida (http://www.cse.usf.edu), where he also served as Deputy Director at the Center for Robot-Assisted Search and Rescue (CRASAR) until the summer of 2005. In 2006, he created the Unmanned Systems Laboratory in the College of Engineering, in which he served as Director. Hewas also the Managing Director of the National Institute for Applied Computational Intelligence (NIACI) and a Faculty Associate at the Center for Urban Transportation Research (CUTR).He joined the University of Denver on September 1, 2008, as Professor and Chair of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department. Since July 1, 2009, he is also Acting Chair of the Computer Science Department. In 2009, he established the DU Unmanned Systems Laboratory (DU²SL), serving as its Director. He is also Guest Professor in the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing, Department of Telecommunications, University of Zagreb (http://www.fer.hr), Croatia. Dr. Valavanis' research interests are focused in the areas of Unmanned Systems, Distributed Intelligence Systems, Robotics and Automation. He has published over 300 book chapters, technical journal/transaction and referred conference papers. He has co-authored the book Intelligent Robotic Systems: Theory, Design and Applications (with Dr. G. N. Saridis), Kl