Good day, Bhabani Shankar Dey. I'm Arjun. I've had a look through your background and your professional record. I'm interested in hearing more about your work and how you see yourself fitting in here with our faculty. Ready to start?

Please start by introducing your professional journey in academia.

Uh, hello, so.

This is Bharani Shankar De and I completed my.

Doctor of Philosophy from Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi from control and automation groups.

The prior to that I, uh, did my Master of Technology in Control and Industrial Automation in National Institute of Technology.

So in masters I work towards biomedical control.

Applications and in PSD I mostly work towards.

Theoretical aspects of stability safety.

And switch to nonlinear systems.

Uh, which finds application in many.

In engineering fields like.

Electric vehicles, robotics and power. Electronic converters everywhere. Switching is there.

So after that I joined as a postdoctoral researcher in Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore in the department of Robert Boss Center for Cyber Physical Systems. There I mostly work towards.

Human robot collaboration.

Uh, and how safety and stability can be ensured during collaboration when human and robot are sharing a space workspace to particular.

And also I am working towards seem to real gap minimization.

Uh, in, uh, when, whenever we design something on, on computer or some simulator and when we implement that there in the real hardware and there is a gap, actually my work is towards how do we minimize that gap. And we have worked in hardware, uh, related stuffs, uh, to validate our, uh, theory, uh, in IIC Bangalore, so I'm interested. Uh, to join.

If selected the community vit community because.

One of the, uh, premier Institute, uh, I have, I have heard, and also from the many success stories they are sharing, I have heard from my seniors also who are working there. So it, it provides a very conducive environment and uh, uh, research friendly environment, uh, and high quality education. Also, students are of very high quality.

So it will be very beneficial for me to, uh, start my career now because I have not joined anywhere as a assistant professor till now. I'm working in the field of research only till now after completion of my PhD. So it will be very good to contribute to this community, which is also an established one and a reputed 1. So that's my introduction.

Yeah. So if I start uh, my, like my expert is to be particular is in the control system. So from the very basic problem of a uh, biomedical control, I'll start then I can go to other areas so.

Professor Dey, let's begin by discussing your expertise in Power Electronics, Power Systems, or Control Systems. Could you provide an example of a complex project or research work in these areas that illustrates your deep knowledge?

Let's say, uh, I worked in this, uh, artificial pancreas where?

Uh, diabetes is a common.

Artificial pancreas problem where diabetes is a common problem where the the objective of the problem is to control the glucose level automatically. You know there is without human intervention. So there will there will be a there will be artificial pancreas like insulin pump will be there a glucose monitoring device will be there. So this glucose monitoring.

Guys will monitor the level of the glucose every 5 minutes or so and it works like a feedback and then it it will give feedback to the reference level of the glucose. And then according to the difference, the insulin pump will be the actuator and as per the control algorithm that we design. So the exact amount of insulin will be infused into the human body. So this entire feedback or the control system comes into the existence.

To control the level of the glucose automatically. Now the challenge is.

The human body is different because, uh, it has several complex, uh, physiological parameters that needs to be, uh, taken care of while designing the controller. Like the parameters are can vary from a one person to another person, one subject to another subject. So those things are to be taken care of and the robustness aspect that we're introducing in the control algorithm takes care of those things.

Another example may be a different short-term example where I am currently working in the field of robotics where a human robot collaboration comes into existence where a human is there and a robot is there and they're interacting. Like some specific task has to be done like pick and place task, but human also has to be there to assist that robot and robot is also assisting the human. So in that case. Whenever human is there in the space, we need safety.

So this is one example.

So the robot should not do anything and everything that human can hurt. So whenever you are like let's say the robot is touching the human, the force exerted by the human and the force exerted by the robot to the human should also be in certain limits. So that that we are taking care by designing itself. The controller, the control design should take care of the safety aspect.

And so we are taking the help of impedance control.

Which is all, which is again inspired from the concepts of electrical engineering and implemented to the robotics. So we are we are implementing this impedance control to help the human robot collaboration to be safe and stable.

So these there, there are many examples where control can be uh can can be useful. And these are like 2 examples that I have given because I have uh worked in these fields also.

Thank you, Professor Dey. Your explanation clearly highlights your command over control systems and their real-world applications in critical areas like biomedical systems and robotics. Now, honing in on your teaching capabilities, could you describe your approach to teaching both theory and laboratory courses, particularly in control systems or any other relevant subjects?

Teaching has been the primary reason I am in in research. After that I also developed the research acumen and all so teaching has been my primary.

Yeah, so actually.

Focus because I come from a family where my father, my grandfather all used to be teachers. So from taking the inspiration from that, I, I, I will go by both.

Balance of theory and practical because in controls as control is heavy on maths. Actually if you say like you depend on lot of mathematical tools to prove some algorithm or theorems. So control is very heavy on maths. Sometimes it will be very difficult to track because.

Because people will not.

Uh, understand, uh, maths very properly, but if you can, uh, if you can visualize something, if you can see something that is working so that, that helps to understand. So controls basically, I have been involved in labs, uh, since my Mtech also like we have a very, uh, very, uh, application oriented setups like magnetic levitation system. Uh, water, water level control system.

And this two link 32 link manipulators and also a ball on the beam mastering damper systems. All these have been there I have worked on. So the basic idea is let's say I'm teaching a course on control or an advanced control system, let's say non-linear control system. Now we have to link those concepts with the lab things, let's say magnetic levitation system. So it's a non linear system because the coil is there and.

What is the current? So it's a. It's a nonlinear system. It doesn't follow the principle of superposition. So what are the behaviors of the nonlinear system I'm teaching in the class and that are to be explained in parallel?

In the lab, uh, which is going to happen in the magnetic levitation that for for that matter, let's say this is the example. So what are the peculiar behavior of the non linear system and how do you control that non linear system?

So one approach is people linearize it. So that is also like taught in theory and you show that how how you are linearizing the nonlinear magnetic levitation system and controlling it.

Around an operating point and what what what is the advantage that you are getting and what are the problems so this kind of Co teaching theory and practice and how do we interlink between them also is very important so also I am very.

And brainstorming rather than just, uh, going for a regular classroom. Maybe. So now it is people are very like students are of, uh, sought attention span. Actually, you cannot hold them for a long time. Just, uh, delivering monotonous stocks. OK, so you have to be very, uh, very innovative and, uh, how to interact with the students and involve them in sub activities. You use.

Supportive of this flip classes where where we can, we can provide some materials upfront a priority to the students and they will have to they have to go through the lecture series and come back and we will have enough scope of discussion.

Use the tools that, that are there available in the market, uh, interactive tools or some AI tools. So they, they, they have to use those, but the at, at the end of the day, the concept, uh, they have to learn and how, how that can help them to implement things. So I, I would also like to add project oriented courses like each, each course should end up with a.

Class project actually that that no matter how small the problem is, they have to solve that problem which can help.

To think or develop their mindset in the direction that they they can develop something in future. We need the developers. That's what from the classroom. It has to be ingrained in the students. Yeah, these are some thoughts that I have.

Thank you, Professor Dey. Your emphasis on integrating theory with hands-on practice, along with utilizing innovative teaching methods, reflects a thoughtful approach to fostering student understanding and engagement. Now, could you share how you handle student evaluation, such as exams or project assessments, ensuring fairness and the measurement of applied understanding?

Yeah, So mostly during my PhD or I see days we there are this Moodle are there like where we, uh, set up exams, uh, in, in, in some app. OK, so there, there we do lot of reshuffling and randomization of the parameters and all to avoid there, there should be matching with the students and all. So actually exams are. Not to fail students, exams are just to test.

Uh, whether they, they have, uh, they have actual learning or not. So I most, I mostly focus on innovative thinking. So there will be some. So when, when, when we set up the questions, there are different percentages, like 30% or 40%, you will keep the, whatever we have taught in the class actually that, that to test the.

Like regular UH learning capability of the students.

Rest 30% like let's say 30% we see a little bit of tricky questions that that will help students to think a little little different and rest the rest of the percentage will be very innovative or research oriented questions. We also we also like.

Ask students like I'm planning to ask. Whenever I take course, I ask. I ask students to prepare their own question.

OK, One, one or two questions. They will prepare their own question and they will answer that. Actually that question will be like you have to prepare our own question. Whatever that you are taught in this course. Based on that, you have to prepare your own question and you answer to that question. That also instigates the thinking capability of a student. How do we frame a research question that will help them?

To cultivate their research so as per the evaluation.

So my target on the evaluation will be to will be to judge their thinking capability, not just numbers, OK, sometimes the numbers.

Sometimes the numbers may be slate. Actually, sometimes, uh, let's say there is a calculation mistake of of course there will be some panelization about that mistake, but.

The more rewards should be on the conceptual clarity rather than these regular mathematical mistakes or some silly mistakes that someone has made. Of course they are of the of course they should be penalized. But if the same person has done it correctly through the conceptual clarity, some mistakes in the mathematics or some silly mistakes, he should be also rewarded. So that's my philosophy.

Yeah.

Thank you, Professor Dey. Your focus on fostering critical thinking and rewarding conceptual clarity, alongside fair and structured evaluations, aligns well with contemporary educational goals. Now, let’s shift to guiding student projects and research. Could you describe how you approach mentoring students, particularly in research projects, to ensure both academic rigor and original contributions?

Yeah. So, uh, research is a long journey. Uh, it depends on whom we are guiding. So there are clear demarcation of guiding different set of students. Let's say we are guiding some undergraduate students, we're guiding some masters student, we're guiding some PSD students. So basically those three, mostly those three kind of categories are there in research domain you have to guide. So let's say I start with the undergraduate student, if I guide, if I guide an undergraduate student.

He has only one year. OK, So the thought process would be I'll give an application specific problem. They'll directly work on the application. OK, So if of course, if someone is very interested into theory and also they're welcome. But if if they have let less time because they have less time. So we'll directly dive into an application, let's say some embedded control, some designing something on the embedded platform to achieve something. So let's say.

In like traffic light control, uh, intelligent traffic light, just an example. OK, so they have to directly work on the application because they have less time. Actually they are more into application side. If I go for the Mtech project, it may be a mix of theoretical research, development and the practical thing, but not far, uh, like not far, not too ahead of. Uh, too deep into the theoretical innovation?

So the the the supervisor should have a clear understanding of what should be the outcome at the end of two years. OK, so that Mtech also they they will undergo the coursework first. So the postgraduate project thought process should be we know at least how should be the output and we guide the students.

Please continue,

So but but, but when it comes to the PhD thing, so it should be very deep and because it is an investment of some years, so it has to be like a deep literature survey by the students and the marketing, the.

Known things and unknown things in a recent area like So the area is important. The problem in a PST solves the problem hub. Actually good problem. I mean a good problem in PhD solves the problem. So the problem is we have to find a good problem for that the student and the supervisor has to work.

Like collaboratively quite close enough and see the literature and.

Find a good problem, that's the first step. Find a good problem, then you acquire tools to solve that problem. So that is also important for the students. The supervisor should ensure the student should learn the right tools. OK, that is also important. So there are enough tools, enough resources in the market. The supervisor should take care that.

What to read is not important. What not to read, what not to explore is important. So that aspect, a supervisor should guide the students. So you should not go in that direction. You should not go in that direction. That limitation, that constraining the path for a student so that he can he or she can dig deep into the specific area. That is the main role of the supervisor. And constantly he has to push the limits because. We can do a infinite.

Top things in our life, but we we should push our limits. OK, so the supervisor's role is to push their limits in a right direction. That is also more important. It's not just heuristically going here and there. So the PhD should be like that, like supervisors should have a clear thought process and he should guide the students in a particular direction. So that that's a briefly my notion of guiding different set of categories of.

Thank you, Professor Dey. Your structured approach to tailoring guidance based on the student's academic stage while emphasizing focus, rigorous inquiry, and proper mentorship is well-grounded. Let us now discuss your communication approach. How do you ensure your teaching concepts are delivered in a clear and structured way, especially when explaining complex topics?

Yeah. So while teaching and explaining the explaining the complex topics, I would take the help of audio visual things like when someone sees something that lasts, so a picture says 1000 words, something like that. So you have to take the help of pictures.

Some relevant pictures and videos. So that explains a lot of words in single thing.

So we have to, we have to plan to device, uh, such, uh, examples or such, uh, methods where we can explain the concept, uh, complex things easily to the student so they can memorize. So basically the, the approach is you have to involve the students all the time to, to, to, to appreciate a complex topic or to, uh, to accept the complex topic, to understand the complex topic, we have to involve the students.

Please

So for when you are planning to involve the students, you have to prepare accordingly. So those are like the innovative and interactive, interactive tools like this audio visual things that I said. And you have to also arrange some like let's say group discussion among the students you and you try to let's say this stability in control system, the stability and safety. They're very nice topics OK, but they have some contradiction like.

If if you are making safety, if you're ensuring safety, then somehow you can also like compromise and stability and vice versa. So in that you just make a group of safety and make a group of stability and.

You just try to create a group discussion kind of thing, or a war among the students to talk on stability. Why I'm important.

And took on safety via important. So in that way you can involve everyone and they will eventually learn the complex concepts, right. So the broad outline is you have to involve the students through the interactive methods or innovative ways. So that just forget about the like conventional teaching methodology. Yeah, we we can help take the help of some conventional techniques. Those are also good.

Some things are good and some things we have to use the innovative technique that has been recently developed, yeah.

Thank you, Professor Dey. Your focus on using audiovisual aids, encouraging active participation, and fostering discussion to tackle complex topics shows your commitment to making learning both effective and engaging. Could you provide examples of any research publications you've authored in reputed journals and what areas they cover?

Yeah. So, uh, uh, uh, like as I said, I worked in this switched system which is very wide, broad range of applications like power converters and all. So there we talked about stability of the interconnected system, OK. So where there are many systems which are kind of individually working in their own domain, but they are also interacting with each other, OK. So in that case. Stability of 1 system doesn't guarantee the stability of the interconnection.

OK. So for that we have derived or proposed some results so that we can talk about the stability of the overall system. Some some conditions that we have proposed so that the stability of the interconnected system also can be ensured. Moreover, this system dynamics that we talked about are assumed to be known in many research papers. So recently we worked in a system dynamics which is kind of unknown because we don't know.

Uh, always the system dynamics. In that case, how do we control? How do we design the controllers to achieving some task?

And also, yeah, the the these are.

Could you continue? I'm interested to hear more.

Yeah. So in in some cases.

Uh, I said that the system dynamics is unknown, OK. So in that case, how do you ensure that stability or some performance that you have achieved is guaranteed? So in the in that we have designed, we have written some papers and that are accepted. So in the recent work that I was talking about a SIM to real gap problem.

And the robot has to perform it. Uh, it's a ground robot, let's say mobile robot. It has to reach a target, avoiding some obstacles. There's a very basic task. So when, when you design the controller on some mathematical model of the robot and that you implement that in the hardware. So what I, what we observed is that when we implemented the same controller, it was hitting the obstacle and not reaching the target in the specific time. OK, Then we proposed some control.

In in that case, as I said, there was a robot.

Technique where you design the controller for the mathematical model, that controller that we proposed and then implement that directly into the hardware. You will not hit the obstacle or reach the target. You will reach the target in the specific time with some epsilon closeness. So that is the gap and we are minimizing that gap.

Quantifying that gap 1st and minimizing that gap. So that helps always to implementation, avoid the implementation issues because we designers always first solve in pen and paper, then simulated, then deploy in the hardware. So that is a very nice way of hierarchical design we propose where you can use our controller directly with the hardware and you guarantee that it will not.

Hit the obstacle.

Yeah.

Thank you, Professor Dey. Your publications reflect meaningful contributions to both theoretical and practical challenges, particularly in system stability, unknown dynamics, and applications like robotics. This alignment between conceptual research and real-world implementation is commendable. Do you have any experience with industry projects or consultancy, particularly where these academic insights have been translated into industrial outcomes or applications?

Yeah, So in during post doc we have a lot of exposure to industry problems because there are some projects which directly solves the industry problem. I have never worked in industries but I have worked on the industry problems. Actually you know we also visited some industries to understand their problems. SO2 problems I can highlight is.

Uh, we had this, uh, project from ISRO in ISRO, uh, is a Space Research organization in India. So where the problem was to control, uh, the sloshing, uh, of the oil, uh, in the tank of the Rockets, OK, So there will be this rockets where there will be fuel when you carry those. Rockets either horizontally or particularly it is taking up. So there will be a lot of fuel oscillation will be there. So the example of slossing is let's say.

Like I'm bringing a cup of coffee and it is filled with some, uh, coffee. And when you were, when you were taking that, that there is a chance that the coffee will be sloshing out because of the motion. OK, So that that same phenomenon happens in the Rockets also the and that causes instability. OK, that can create lot of problems. So the, the idea is to control that slossing like. Phenomenon so that it should not oscillate much.

And it will not spill over, spill over or create instability. So in that case, we design controller for the motion of this, such horizontal motion such that that oscillation comes down. That's one sort of industry application that I can provide. Recently we worked on another problem is.

The like a geostationary. So this is the problem given by the BL Bharat Electronics Limited where they were solving a problem of tracking a geostationary satellite. The antenna will be there on the ship and it will it will track a geostationary satellite. OK, so the sheep is moving because sheep is moving in that way and it is oscillating because the oscillation of the water. And in that case we have to maintain a specific very precise angle.

So the controller that we are designing.

To so the antenna will have different joints motors will be there. So the coordinated control that controller that we have to design is to manage or is to achieve certain degrees of that motor such that the antenna will track the geostationary satellite in presence of these oscillations provided by the ship because it will be it will be having. Roll pitch here. Everything.

That is going to affect the antenna. So this is another problem, another problem that I initially told about the artificial pancreas is a very nice industry problem. So while you are integrating these glucose monitoring device, the pump and the app where the controller will be sitting. So this communication between all these three. And how do how do we implement this in the embedded platform is a very, very nice industry problem, so.