Fees and maintenance available to the successful candidate. Available from 1 January 2007 for a period of three years This EPSRC funded research programme is concerned with the development of novel, theoretically sound sliding mode control techniques for application to nonlinear, complex and uncertain industrial processes. The research will focus on extending the existing sliding mode control design paradigm to enable the application of the methodology, with its proven robustnessproperties, to systems with after effect, otherwise known as time-delay systems and only given output signals are available for measurement. The applied research will focus on the production of two significant implementation studies relating to control of autonomous and semi-autonomous vehicles and also the control of satellites to demonstrate the efficacy of the underlying philosophy and the new design algorithms. These are pertinent design studies to inform the development of the theoretical research programme as well as being used as vehicles to illustrate the research outcomes. The broad objectives are

• To provide practical yet theoretically rigorous solutions to the problem of robust sliding mode control for uncertain nonlinear systems in the presence of time-delay based upon knowledge of the measured system output(s). The problem will be considered from both a continuous and discrete time perspective.
• To produce significant implementation studies relating to control of satellites and autonomous and semi-autonomous vehicles which demonstrate the relevance of the theoretical results to industry.

Applicants should have a good honours degree, or internationally recognisedequivalent, in engineering or mathematics.

Please send a full CV to:

Professor Sarah Spurgeon,
Department of Engineering
University of Leicester,
University Road, Leicester LE1 7RH.
Tel: 0116 2522531, fax: 0116 252 2619,
email: eon@le.ac.uk

Closing date: 15 December 2006

For details of an Engineering Research Associate vacancy in the same project please Click Here
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