Department of Electrical Engineering, Tokyo University of Science
Professor Emeritus, University of Tokyo
Chairman, Wireless EV Alliance
Yoichi Hori received his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan, in 1978, 1980, and 1983, respectively. In 1983, he joined the Department of Electrical Engineering, The University of Tokyo, as a Research Associate. He later became Professor at the same university, in 2000. In 2002, he moved to the Institute of Industrial Science and in 2008, to the Department of Advanced Energy, Graduate School of Frontier Sciences, the University of Tokyo. He retired in March. 2021, and has been in current position since April. In 1991-1992, he was a Visiting Researcher at the University of California at Berkeley. His research fields are control theory and its industrial applications to motion control, mechatronics, robotics, electric vehicles, etc. Recently, he has been focusing on the research and promotion of wireless power transfer. He is a Life Fellow of IEEE and a past AdCom member of IES. He is now the Honorary member of JSAE (the Society of Automotive Engineers of Japan), the Fellow members of IEEJ, and so on. He was the Presidents of the Industry Applications Society of the IEEJ, and WEVA (World Electric Vehicle Association), the Director of Japan Automobile Research Institute (JARI), and the Vice-President of JSAE. He is now the President of Capacitors Forum, the Chairman of Motor Technology Symposium of JMA (Japan Management Association), and the Representative Director of NeV (Next Generation Vehicle Promotion Center), Chairman of Wireless EV (WEV) Alliance.
Question Common Sense of Battery Dependency!
One hundred years later, cars will be driven by gelectric motorsh and receive energy directly from the power infrastructure. Large capacity batteries will have disappeared, and the key technologies will be gsuper capacitors,h which are excellent for transferring power, and gdynamic wireless power transmission (D-WPT),h which connects the car to the power infrastructure. Last year, I established WEV (Wireless EV) Alliance to demonstrate to the Japanese government, that many private companies are very much interested in D-WPT, and want it to take action. The number of member companies exceeds 120. I emphasize the following points: (1) This system spans multiple government ministries, requiring political will. A Prime Minister with strong leadership is absolutely needed. (2) D-WPT and autonomous driving are not a good match. The required reliability levels are completely different. It is important to reduce costs with adequate reliability. If we have a stance of waiting to enter the market only after global standards are established, it means the opportunity will never come. I'm urging many companies to wake up to this reality. D-WPT won't be suddenly introduced. It will be built and refined over decades. It's natural for various vehicles to co-exist and undergo natural selection. A long-term perspective is essential.
Junmin Wang is a Professor and holds the Fletcher Stuckey Pratt Chair in Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin. He began his academic career at Ohio State University in 2008, where he was early promoted to Associate Professor in 2013 and then very early promoted to Full Professor in 2016. In 2018, he joined UT Austin as the Accenture Endowed Professor. Prior to academia, he gained five years of industry experience at Southwest Research Institute. Prof. Wangfs research spans control, modeling, estimation, optimization, diagnosis, and AI for dynamical systems, with applications in automotive systems, smart and sustainable mobility, robotics, human-centric automation, and cyber-physical systems. Dr. Wang has authored or co-authored more than 420 peer-reviewed publications including 205 journal articles and holds 13 U.S. patents. He is the recipient of numerous international and national honors and awards, including the ASME Charles Stark Draper Innovative Practice Award, IEEE Best Vehicular Electronics Paper Award, IEEE Andrew Sage Best Transactions Paper Award, IEEE Transactions on Fuzzy Systems Outstanding Paper Award, NSF-CAREER Award, SAE International Vincent Bendix Automotive Electronics Engineering Award, and ONR Young Investigator Award. Prof. Wang has also been honored as a Fulbright Distinguished Scholar by U.S. Department of State, Distinguished Lecturer for the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society, the IEEE Vehicular Technology Society, and the IEEE Systems, Man, and Cybernetics Society. He is an SAE Fellow, ASME Fellow, and IEEE Fellow.
From Vehicle Dynamics to Human-centric Autonomy: Evolving Frontiers in Motion Control
Vehicle motion control has undergone a profound evolution over the past several decades. Early contributions established foundational principles for enhancing roadway safety and improving energy efficiency through advanced, robust, fault-tolerant, and energy-efficient vehicle motion control algorithms. With the rapid emergence of connected and automated vehicles, the field has expanded beyond traditional performance metrics to include human-centric objectives such as trust, acceptance, intent interpretation, and socially compatible behaviors in mixed-autonomy traffic. This talk provides a technical overview of such a trajectory in vehicle motion control, highlighting key advances from classical control methodologies to contemporary frameworks that integrate sensing, learning, prediction, and human behavioral models. Emphasis is placed on how motion control strategies are reshaped by heterogeneous autonomy, the need for ensuring human acceptance, and the pursuit of socially harmonious interactions among human and machine drivers. The talk concludes with some open challenges and opportunities for next-generation vehicle motion control systems that simultaneously address safety, energy efficiency, human trust, and collective road harmony.
Valentin Ivanov is an expert in automotive control systems and vehicle chassis engineering, currently serving as Head of Smart Vehicle Systems at the Technical University of Ilmenau, Germany. He earned his Ph.D. and D.Sc., focusing on vehicle dynamics and braking control, and obtained a Dr.-Ing. habil. from TU Ilmenau, specialising in advanced active safety systems for conventional and electric vehicles with road condition identification. Since joining TU Ilmenau in 2007, he has coordinated numerous EU-funded initiatives, including CODE4EV for software-defined electric vehicles and OWHEEL for automated wheel corner optimisation. As EU project coordinator, he has supervised over 20 international collaborations, with an emphasis on chassis control, terramechanics, and sustainable e-mobility. His contributions have earned him prestigious recognition, such as SAE Fellow, IEEE Senior Member, and multiple Best Paper Awards. Valentin Ivanov also holds Marie Curie Fellow and Alexander von Humboldt Fellow titles. An active member of SAE International, IEEE, and IFAC, he serves as Associate Editor for several SAE journals and as an expert reviewer for various global funding agencies. In 2019 and 2021, Valentin Ivanov was General Co-Chair of the IEEE IES International Conference of Mechatronics and regularly serves on Technical and Organising Committees of major IEEE IES and IEEE VTS events. With expertise in control engineering and multi-actuated ground vehicles, Valentin Ivanov supervises Ph.D. students, delivers guest lectures worldwide, and advances eco-friendly automotive technologies.
Motion Control within the Context of Software-Defined Vehicles
Software-defined vehicles (SDVs) are emerging as the next major trend in automotive engineering, following electrification and automated driving. SDV concepts should primarily be regarded as functions and processes, rather than as new systems or components. Among the inherent features of SDVs, the zonal vehicle architecture, hardware and software separation, and over-the-air updates are of particular interest. These features create new opportunities for designing complex vehicle motion control systems. In this context, vehicles with the skateboard / wheel corners framework are likely to benefit most from SDVs, especially in relation to multi-actuated control. This talk will provide an overview of these aspects and demonstrate the impact of SDVs on development and validation processes for multi-actuated vehicle motion control. Particular attention will be given to the formulation of new SDV-related control tasks, the potential of new system architectures, the revisiting of validation and verification phases, and specific collaborative development frameworks.The talk will be supplemented with practical examples from ongoing European projects.