Maarten Steinbuch is a full professor at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e), where he is head of the Control Systems Technology group of the Mechanical Engineering Department. He is also Director of the TU/e Automotive Systems Graduate Program and Scientific Director of the Centre of Competence for High Tech Systems of the Federation of Dutch Technical Universities. He has over 12 years of industrial experience with Philips Research Labs and Philips Center for Manufacturing Technology. He is Editor-in-Chief of the IFAC journal on Mechatronics and an Associate Editor of the International Journal of Powertrains. His research interests are in modeling and control of advanced motion systems, robotics for care and cure, automotive powertrains, and fusion plasmas.
Advanced motion systems like pick-and-place machine used in the semiconductor industry, challenge the frontiers of systems and control theory and practice. In the design phase, control oriented design of the electro-mechanics is necessary in order to achieve the tight performance specifications. Once realized, and since experimentation is fast, a machine in the loop procedure can be explored to close the design loop from experiment, using experimental model building,model-based control design, implementation and performance evaluation. Extension of linear modelling techniques towards some classes of nonlinear systems is relevant for improved control of specific motion systems, such as with friction. In the application field of medical robotics the experiences from high tech motion systems can be used successfully, and an eye surgical robot with haptics will be shown as an example.
