Dimitra Panagou

Control Systems Lab
School of Mechanical Engineering
National Technical University of Athens
9, Heroon Polytechneiou Str.
Zografou, Athens 15780
GREECE

Tel : ++30-210-772-3656
e-mail : dpanagou@mail.ntua.gr

I graduated from the School of Mechanical Engineering, National Technical University of Athens, in February 2006. In November 2006 I started my doctoral studies at the Control Systems Lab, School of Mechanical Engineering, N.T.U.A., under the supervision of Prof. Kostas J. Kyriakopoulos.
I successfully defended my Ph.D. Thesis, entitled "Viability Control for Nonholonomic Systems. Application to the Compensation of External Disturbances for Underwater Robotic Vehicles", in April 2012.

In August 2012, I will join the groups of Professors Dusan Stipanovic and Petros Voulgaris at the Coordinated Science Laboratory, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, as a Post Doctoral Research Associate.

My research interests mainly lie in the fields of nonholonomic systems and control and underwater robotics and focus on the development of viable, robust control solutions for underactuated underwater vehicles, in the presence of environmental disturbances and viability (state) constraints.

I am particularly interested in the formal control design for robotic and control systems which are subject to motion constraints, under-actuation, restricted sensing/communications, additive disturbances.

I'm generally interested in nonlinear systems and control, nonholonomic motion planning and control, robot navigation and control, viability theory, constrained control, hybrid and switched systems, switching control, marine robotics, modeling, identification and control of underwater vehicles.

In Fall Semester 2010 I was a visiting scholar at the GRASP Laboratory, School of Engineering and Applied Science, University of Pennsylvania, invited by Professor Vijay Kumar. I worked on the coordinated control of multiple nonholonomic robots with visibility constraints.

In Spring Semester 2009 I was a visiting scholar at the Mechanical Engineering Department at University of Delaware, invited by Assistant Professor Herbert G. Tanner.

In Fall Semester 2007 I worked with the Institute of Oceanography of the Hellenic Center of Marine Research on the development of a 3D Navigation System for unmanned underwater vehicles.

During 2007 and 2008 I worked with the Control Systems Lab, NTUA, on the development of a shared-autonomy system for underwater inspection, deploying a low weight Remotely Operated Vehicle.

For more details, see my CV

Education

Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering, National Technical University of Athens, Greece, 2012

Diploma (M.Sc.) in Mechanical Engineering, National Technical University of Athens, Greece, 2006

Oct 11 - now:	Control Systems Lab, School of Mech. Eng. National Tech. Univ. of Athens Research Associate - Working in PANDORA "Persistent Autonomy through learNing, aDaptation, Observation and ReplAnning", Research Project funded by the European Commission (FP7: Cognitive Systems and Robotics)
Fall 2010:	GRASP Laboratory University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA Visiting Scholar - Invited by Prof. Vijay Kumar Worked on coordinated control for nonholonomic robots with sensors with visibility constraints
Spring 2009:	University of Delaware, Newark, DE, USA Mechanical Engineering Dept. Visiting Scholar - Invited by Prof. Herbert Tanner Worked under the MAST CTA (Micro Autonomous System Technologies, funded by US Army Research Lab)
Jan 09:	Automatic Control Laboratory ETH Zurich, Switzerland Visiting Researcher - Invited by Prof. John Lygeros Worked on viability-based optimal control for underactuated underwater vehicles in the presence of enviromental disturbances
Feb 08:	MIT Sea Grant's AUV Lab Massachusetts Inst. of Technology, MA, USA Visiting Researcher - Worked on the development of a 3D Navigation System for underwater vehicles
Oct 07 - Mar 08:	Hellenic Center for Marine Research (HCMR) Institute of Oceanography Research Engineer - Worked on the development of a GUI, providing 3D terrain visualization and real time display of navigation data (subsystem of a 3D Navigation System for underwater vehicles)
Sep 06 - Mar 08:	Control Systems Lab, School of Mech. Eng. National Tech. Univ. of Athens Research Associate - Worked on the development of Terrain Aided Navigation algorithms for underwater vehicles (under the "Underwater Telecommunication, Automatic Navigation and Acoustic Visualization Technologies for Undersea Vehicle Systems - ROVs, AUVs" project)
Jul 06 - Apr 08:	Control Systems Lab, School of Mech. Eng. National Tech. Univ. of Athens Research Associate - Worked on the development and implementation of an underwater inspection system, employing an underactuated, low-weight ROV (under the "EPIPLEON: Underwater Inspection using Remotely Operated Vehicles" project)

Field Deployment

Oct 08:	Ionian Sea, R/V Philia Installation and testing of a GUI-enhanced Navigation System, employing Bathymetry data and GPS, DVL and USBL measurements, on HCMR MaxRover ROV
Mar 08:	Heraklion Port, Crete, Greece Preliminary field experiments on the development and testing of a 3D GUI-enhanced Navigation System, using GPS and DVL measurements

Journal Papers

1. Dimitra Panagou and Kostas J. Kyriakopoulos "Viability Control for a Class of Underactuated Systems", provisionally accepted in IFAC Automatica
2. Dimitra Panagou, Herbert G. Tanner and Kostas J. Kyriakopoulos "Nonholonomic control design via reference vector fields and output regulation", under review

Conference Papers

1. Dimitra Panagou and Vijay Kumar "Maintaining visibility for leader-follower formations in obstacle environments", 2012 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, St. Paul, Minnesota, May 2012, to appear
2. Dimitra Panagou, Spyros Maniatopoulos and Kostas J. Kyriakopoulos "Control of an Underactuated Underwater Vehicle in 3D Space under Field-of-View Constraints", IFAC Workshop on Navigation, Guidance and Control of Underwater Vehicles, Porto, Portugal, April 2012
3. Dimitra Panagou and Kostas J. Kyriakopoulos "Control of underactuated systems with viability constraints", 50th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control and European Control Conference, Orlando, FL, USA, December 2011 [pdf]
4. Dimitra Panagou, Herbert G. Tanner and Kostas J. Kyriakopoulos "Control of nonholonomic systems using reference vector fields", 50th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control and European Control Conference, Orlando, FL, USA, December 2011 [pdf]
5. Dimitra Panagou and Kostas J. Kyriakopoulos "A switching control approach for the robust practical stabilization of a unicycle-like underwater vehicle under non-vanishing perturbations", 2011 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, Shanghai, P.R. China, May 2011
6. Dimitra Panagou, Herbert G. Tanner and Kostas J. Kyriakopoulos "Dipole-like fields for stabilization of systems with Pfaffian constraints", 2010 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, Anchorage, Alaska, USA, May 2010 [pdf]
7. Dimitra Panagou, Kostas Margellos, Sean Summers, John Lygeros and Kostas J. Kyriakopoulos "A viability approach for the stabilization of an underactuated underwater vehicle in the presence of current disturbances", 48th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, Shanghai, P.R. China, December 2009
8. Nikolaos Papantonopoulos, Dimitra Panagou and Stamatina Alexandri "A Navigation System for Underwater Vehicles integrating DVL and USBL measurements", 9th Hellenic Symposium of Oceanography, Patras, Greece, May 2009
9. Dimitra Panagou, George C. Karras and Kostas J. Kyriakopoulos "Towards the stabilization of an underactuated underwater vehicle in the presence of unknown disturbances", MTS/IEEE OCEANS 2008 Conference, Quebec City, Quebec, Canada
10. George C. Karras, Dimitra Panagou and Kostas J. Kyriakopoulos "Target-referenced Localization of an Underwater Vehicle using a Laser based Vision System", MTS/IEEE OCEANS 2006 Conference, Boston, MA, USA