Urbano Nunes is a Full Professor with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (DEEC) of the Faculty of Sciences and Technology (FCTUC) of Coimbra University.
Dr. Nunes is Vice-director of the Coimbra pole of the Institute for Systems and Robotics (ISR-Coimbra), where he is the coordinator of the Automation and Mobile Robotics Group and the Coordinator of the Mechatronics Laboratory. He has been involved with/responsible for several funded projects at both national and international levels in the areas of mobile robotics, intelligent vehicles (such as Cybercars, Cybermove, CyberC3) and intelligent transportation systems (ITS). Dr. Nunes has research interests in several areas in connection with intelligent vehicles, robotics and mechatronics, namely on technologies for autonomous vehicles (navigation and perception), pattern recognition, and human-centered mobile robots. He is author/coauthor of more than 100 publications on international scientific journals, book chapters, and refereed conference proceedings.
Dr. Nunes is presently the Vice President for Technical Activities of the IEEE ITS Society, a member of the Board of Governors of ITS Society (2009-2011), and a Cochair of the Technical Committee (2006-2011) on Autonomous Ground Vehicles and ITS of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (RAS). He serves as Associate Editor the journals: IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems and IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Magazine.
He was with several international conferences: General Cochair of the 11th International Conference on Advanced Robotics (ICAR2003); IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Conference, ITSC2006 Program Chair and ITSC2008 Program Cochair; Program Chair of the IEEE International Conference on Vehicular Electronics and Safety (ICVES2007); General Chair of the 13th IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Conference (ITSC2010). He is the General Chair (with Prof. A. de Almeida) for the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2012).
- Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems
- Associate Editor of the IEEE ITS Magazine of the Intelligent Transportation Systems Society
General Chair of the ITSC2010 13th International IEEE Conference on Intelligent Transportation Systems, 19 – 22 September 2010, Madeira Island, Portugal;- Co-organizer of the ITSC2010 Workshop on "Emergent Cooperative Technologies in Intelligent Transportation Systems", 19 Sept., Madeira Island, Portugal;
- Co-organizer of the ICRA2010 Workshop on "Robotics and Intelligent Transportation System", Anchorage, Alaska, USA, 2010.
- Co-organizer of the IROS09 Workshop on "Planning, Perception and Navigation for Intelligent Vehicles", October 11-15, 2009, St. Louis, MO, USA.
- Co-Organizer of the ICRA2009 Workshop on " Safe Navigation in Open Dynamic Environments: Aplications to Autonomous Vehicles", May 12th 2009, Kobe, Japan
- Program Co-chair of ITSC2008, IEEE Int. Conference on Intelligent Transportation Systems, October 12-15, 2008,Beijing, China.
- Co-organizer of the IROS08 Workshop on "Planning, Perception and Navigation for Intelligent Vehicles", September 26th 2008, Nice, France
- Program chair of IEEE International Conference on Vehicular Electronics and Safety - ICVES07, Beijing, China, Dec. 13-15, 2007
- Co-organizer of the IROS07 Workshop on "Safe Navigation in Open and Dynamic Environments: Applications to Autonomous Vehicles", San Diego, CA, October 29, 2007
- Co-organizer of the ICRA07 Workshop on "Planning, Perception and Navigation for Intelligent Vehicles", Rome, April 14, 2007
- Program chair of IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Transportation System - ITSC2006, Toronto, September 17-20, 2006
- General Co-chair of IEEE ICAR2003 - 11th International Conference on Advanced Robotics, Coimbra, 2003
He is responsible for Digital Control and Digital Control Project MSc courses, and for Methodologies of Mobile Robotics, PhD course in Electrical and Computers Engineering.
