Deadline: Applications will be accepted at any time until the position is filled.

Cyber-physical systems (CPS) refer to engineered systems that are built from, and depend upon, the tight integration of physical components, computational resources, and communication capabilities. These systems are at the heart of our critical infrastructure and form the basis of our future smart services. The increased efficiency and interaction among computation, communication, and the physical entities enable advances that improve the quality of life, including personalized health monitoring and delivery, autonomous systems for search and rescue, firefighting, and exploration, automated traffic control, and the smart electric power generation and delivery, etc.. However, due to the integration of computation and communication, CPS are prone to a variety of security threats that do not exist in traditional systems such as cyber-attacks or privacy disclosure on their data management and communication layer. Neither classical systems and control approaches nor information security methods are adequate for providing security protection for CPS. For instance, reliance on communication networks increases the possibility of intentional cyber-attacks against physical plants, and this issue cannot be treated by using classical control design approaches. On the other hand, information security methods such as authentication, access control, message integrity, etc., do not exploit the compatibility of the measurements with the underlying physical process and control mechanism, which is in many cases the ultimate goal of a protection scheme.

This project will tackle several important secure control design problems for CPSs, e.g., robust control under cyber-attack, privacy-respected control, etc.. We plan to developed advanced algorithms and protocols that achieve desirable system performance and security. The proposed algorithms and protocols will be verified using both numerical simulation and experiments on a multiple UAV test platform. Successful applicants will have to demonstrate good knowledge of control systems and maths. Prior knowledge of information security will be a distinct advantage, although not required.

If you wish to discuss any details of the project informally, please contact Dr. Zhan SHU, Electro-Mechanical Engineering research group, Email: z.shu<στο>soton.ac.uk, Tel: +44 (0) 2380 59 3687.