A Ph.D. position is available at INRIA Lille research center, France on 'Finite-time estimation and control of undulatory motion'.

(http://team.inria.fr/non-a/open-positions/) Contributed by: Denis Efimov, denis.efimov@inria.fr

Description:

The finite-time estimation and control is a central direction of research of Non-A team. By undulatory motion we understand the class of systems those behavior has undulatory/periodical/oscillatory nature. As examples of systems possessing an undulatory motion explored by the Non-A team and in the proposing PhD it is necessary to mention the humanoid and animal robots (position estimation and undulation control), the circadian rhythm in living organisms (state estimation and phase resetting) or the heart oscillations (heart position reconstruction based on acceleration measurements).

In control and estimation of this type of systems it is necessary to take into account their oscillatory action in order to improve the quality of developing solutions. The new robust and accurate design approaches developed for robot locomotion have to blow up the robotics in the nearest future impelling a wide application of robots in the real life. Similarly, the control/estimation of biological systems is a key tool for understanding the nature phenomena in modern science. These are the main research directions of the proposed PhD.

The PhD will be concentrated on the problems of estimation/observer design as well a related controller synthesis for undulatory motion systems. These problems have to be investigated with application of fundamental methods developed by Non-A team such as algebraic estimation and or numerical differentiation, control and estimation for homogeneous systems, other finite-time estimation techniques. The obtained algorithms will take into account three indicators (which characterize its performance): the computation time (the aim is to get on-line estimation), the algorithm complexity (simplicity of design and implementation for embedded real-time estimation) and finally the robustness with respect to a large class of measurement noises, to parameter uncertainties and to discretization and numerical implementation.

Skills and profile:

•MS in Mathematics/Applied Mathematics or in Automatic Control or in Robotics.

•A good background in control and estimation of systems and signal processing.

•A background in robotics will be an advantage. 

Benefits: 

Duration: 36 months – starting date of the contract : October 2012, 15th

Salary: 1957,54 € the first two years and 2058,84 € the third year

Monthly salary after taxes: around 1597,11€ the 1st two years et 1679,76 €

the 3rd year (social security included).

Possibility of French courses

Help for housing

Participation for transportation

Scientific Resident card and help for husband/wife visa

Additional information: 

Application deadline: 4 May 2012, via the website of INRIA

(http://www.inria.fr/en/institute/recruitment/offers/phd/campaign-2012).

Before applying, please contact the scientist advisor:

Wilfrid.Perruquetti@inria.fr, Denis.Efimov@inria.fr, Gang.Zheng@inria.fr