PhD Vacancy

A PhD position is available at INRIA Lille research center, France, on “Finite-time estimation and control of undulatory motion”. The PhD will be concentrated on the problems of estimation/observer design as well a related controller synthesis for undulatory motion systems.

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.

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.

Requirements

• 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

The duration of the position is 36 months, starting date of the contract on October 2012, 15th. The amount of the salary is 1957,54 € for the first two years and 2058,84 € for the third year. Monthly salary after taxes: around 1597,11€ at the 1st two years, and 1679,76 € at the 3rd year (social security included).

Selected candidate will have possibility of French courses, help for housing, participation for transportation, and Scientific Resident card and help for husband/wife visa.

Application

Application deadline: 4 May 2012, via INRIA’s recruitment website at 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, or Gang.Zheng@inria.fr.