Introduction to Industrial Automation

George Nikolakopoulos

 is a professor of robotics and automation in the Department of Computer 

Science, Electrical and Space Engineering at Luleå University of Technology, Luleå, Sweden. His 

work focuses in the area of robotics, control applications, and cyberphysical systems, while he has 

extensive experience in creating and managing European and national research projects. Previously, 

he has worked as a project manager and principal investigator in several R&D&I projects funded 

by the European Union (EU), European Space Agency (ESA), and Swedish and the Greek National 

Ministry of Research, on projects such as: (a) EU-funded projects: AEROWORKS, DISIRE, 

Compinnova, FLEXA (IP), C@R (IP), NANOMA (STREP), SYMBIOSIS-EU (STREP), 

CONFIDENCE (STREP), PROMOVEO (STREP), and CommRob (STREP); (b) ARTEMIS-

funded projects: R5-COP; and (c) Swedish-funded projects: Mine Patrolling Rovers, Pneumatic 

Muscle Dancer, etc. In 2014, he was the coordinator of the H2020-ICT AEROWORKS proj-

ect in the field of collaborative unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and the H2020-SPIRE project 

DISIRE in the field of integrated process control with a total budget of 12M Euros. In 2013, he 

has received a grant of 220K Euros for establishing the largest outdoor motion capture system in 

Sweden and most probably in Europe as part of the FROST Field Robotics Lab at Luleå University 

of Technology. In 2014, Prof. Nikolakopoulos was nominated as Luleå University of Technology 

(LTU’s) Wallenberg candidate, one of three nominees from the university and 16 in total engi-

neering nominees in Sweden. In 2003, he received the Information Societies Technologies (IST) 

Prize Award for best paper that promotes the scope of the European IST (currently known as 

Information and Communication Technologies [ICT]) sector. Prof. Nikolakopoulos’ publications 

in the field of UAVs have received top recognition from the related scientific community, and these 

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 Authors

publications have been listed several times in the TOP 25 most popular publications in control 

engineering practice from Elsevier. In 2014, he has received the 2014 Premium Award for Best 

Paper in IET Control Theory and Applications, Elsevier for research work in the area of UAVs. This 

premium award recognizes the best research papers published during the past two years in this 

journal. Finally, his published scientific work includes more than 150 published international 

journals and conferences in the fields of his interest.

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