University of Leeds
Research School of Engineering
Leeds, UK
University of Leeds
The University of Leeds has staff with extensive experience in all areas of electrical and mechanical engineering and computer science that are needed for the Robovolc project. The School of Mechanical Engineering, that will be directly involved with the project has an impressive research tradition and it has been awarded the highest grade of 5* in the recent UK Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) carried out in 2001. There is considerable expertise in the areas of mechanics, mechatronics, vehicle dynamics, design and manufacture, biomedical engineering, combustion and engineering fluid dynamics. Research is being carried out in all these areas funded from a balanced portfolio of grants from Research Councils, Government, DTII, Industry, charity and the EC. Turnover on research grants is around £2 M/ annum and around 30-40 research fellows and engineers are supported. The School has around 75 postgraduate PhD students, 20 Masters students and 150 Undergraduate students in the areas of Mechanical Engineering, Aeronautical and Aerospace Engineering, Automotive Engineering, Computing in Engineering, Mechatronics and Medical Engineering.. The School has 25 academic staff, 25 technical staff, 12 clerical staff and 3 computing staff. This School’s expertise has been recently enhanced by the appointment of a new Professor in Robotics & control who brings with him considerable expertise in mobile robotics and in particular in the area of climbing and walking robots for industrial applications. This experience and involvement in several EC programmes (e.g Teleman, Brite Euram, Esprit, IST and GROWTH Programmes) is being used in extending research links and funding opportunities. In addition there is extensive experience in control theory and its application in a range of areas with traditional adaptive and modern heuristic methods having being applied to real systems (industrial process plants, automotive and aerospace systems). An annual project is also carried out to design, develop and build a Formula 1 type of racing car within the School. Key persons involved in the project
