9720708 Habetler This award provides support for eight US investigators to participate in a US-South Africa Workshop on Intelligent Systems in Power Electronics, Pretoria, South Africa, July 1998. The US organizer is Professor Thomas G. Habetler of the School of Electrical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, and Professor Ron Harley, Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Natal, Durban, South Africa. The workshop will be held during and immediately following the FEPPCON (IEEE Future of Electronic Power Processing and Conversion) conference, which itself follows the IEEE International Symposium on Industrial Electronics. The US-South Africa workshop will focus on trends in intelligent systems, algorithms and their implementation, hardware considerations, applications of artificial intelligence (AI) in power electronics (PE), and future applications. The purpose of the workshop is to bring together US and South African researchers in the AI and PE fields to plot out a map of the important steps to take in this evolving technology. Intelligent systems incorporating AI allows one to transfer human knowledge and skills to computers or other types of hardware. AI also enables a hardware or computer system to use algorithms to train itself to a level that a human cannot achieve in terms of complexity and speed of decision making. AI researchers traditionally study new algorithms and often have expertise in mathematics and the theory of algorithm development and performance. AI has been successfully applied to pattern recognition, time series prediction, and system identification and control. All of these functions are crucial in the operation of advanced PE system controllers. PE researchers traditionally study the devices, circuit topologies, and control algorithms that make up power processing equipment. The award is supported jointly by the Division of International Programs and the Division of Electrical and Communications Systems. ***
