Professor Josep Tornero was born in Valencia, Spain in 1956. He received his B.Sc. and his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering at the Polytechnic University of Valencia in 1978 and 1985 respectively. He obtained the M.Sc. Degree in Systems and Control from the University of Manchester, Institute of Science and Technology in 1982. In 1986, he became Associate Professor and, since 1993, he has been Full Professor of the Department of Systems Engineering and Control at the Computer Science Faculty in the Polytechnic University of Valencia.

From 1981 to 1983, he was Visiting Researcher at the Control Systems Center of the University of Manchester, Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST). During 1990, he spent nine months as Visiting Researcher at the CIRSSE (NASA Center for Intelligent Robotics Systems for Space Exploration), Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York, USA, during 1990 and Visiting Professor at the Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of California at Berkeley, USA, during 1999.

He is Director of the post-graduate course, Master of Science in Computer Aided Design (CAD), Computer Aided Manufacturing (CAM) and Computer Integrated Manufacturing (CIM), in progress since 1988.

In 1984, he was appointed Vice Director of the Computer Science Faculty, in addition to being Head of Studies from 1985 to 1989. From 1992 to 1993, he was appointed Vice Dean of the same Faculty.

In 1994, Professor Tornero was appointed the Secretary General (Registrar) of the Polytechnic University of Valencia, and from 1995 to 1996 Vice Rector of the same University.

Professor Tornero is in the Department of Systems Engineering and Automation. The department has a staff of more than 30 full-time faculty members involved in the area of Automatic Control and Robotics. The Department is carrying out research in a wide range of topics, such as intelligent control, fuzzy and neural control, expert systems, adaptive control, robotics and artificial vision.

Professor Tornero is responsible for the Robotics Group, mainly concerned with the integration, programming, control, simulation and management of robot arms and auto-guided-vehicles (AGVs). He is particularly interested in three topics: collision detection and avoidance, automatic trajectory generation, robot control, sensing and data fusion.

Professor Tornero is also doing research on multirate sampled data systems in the aspects of modeling, analysis and control design. At present, a research group in the department is involved in the modeling and design steps in multirate sampling structures. We have implemented CC, MATLAB and SIMULINK packages in order to simulate the obtained results.We are also working on multirate control of flexible structure robot.

Professor Tornero is Visiting Researcher at the Mechatronics Group of the Mechanical Engineering Department, University of California at Berkeley, since July 1998 conducting research on multi-rate digital control, factory automation and intelligent transportation systems.

He has given lectures, seminars and presented many papers in control topics such as digital control, multi-rate sampled data systems and periodic systems, as well as robotics topics such as robot dynamics and control, collision detection and avoidance, path and trajectory planning.

He has experience in teaching Digital Control, Computer Control and Robotic, in general

Being Visiting Professor, during 1999, Professor Tornero was hired as staff faculty of the University of California at Berkeley.

Member of IEEE, IFAC, DECUS and from 1993 to 1995 was elected member of the Spanish Robotic Association Board.

He has participated in European research projects such as ESPRIT, BRITE, EUREKA and STRIDE, and in educational projects as ERAMUS, INTERCAMPUS, ALPHAS and TEMPUS.

He is fluent in English, understands French, likes gardening, music, and regularly practices sports such as jogging, cycling and swimming.

Professor Tornero is married with two children.

 
 
 
Prof. Josep Tornero
Dep. Ing. de Sistemas y Automatica
(Dept of Systems Engineering and Control)
Universidad Politecnica de Valencia