Abstract
Two of the three papers in this part special issue are derived from the InstMC Mini-Symposium at Control 2012, held at Cardiff in September 2012. The Symposium was successful in attracting a mix of papers drawn from industry and academia with a lively audience participating fully in the question and answer sessions. The event was extremely well attended, and part 2 of this special issue attempts to recapture the atmosphere as well as the inspiring discussions of the day.
The first paper by Dr Alexandros Mouzakitis of Jaguar Land Rover is concerned with classification of fault diagnosis methods for control systems. It provides a brief overview of a number of methods for control systems, focusing on the established methods, which are grouped into three main categories, namely, model-based, hardware-based and history-based. The suitability of the methods will be dependent on the intended application as well as the quality of the measured data and models required.
The second paper by Dr Olivier Haas et al. of the Control Theory and Applications Centre, Coventry University, deals with intelligent transportation systems components in urban traffic simulators. This paper describes the technologies, methods and components of an intelligent transportation system, and provides an example of an agent-based simulator for rerouting strategies and incident response. A new cloud traffic management system is also introduced and shown to be effective in improving efficiency.
The third paper by James E Trollope of the Control Theory and Applications Centre, Coventry University, was partly inspired by the fruitful discussion at the Symposium. The paper proposes the use of actively controlled materials within lightweight vehicle body structures in order to change the structural properties of substructures within the frontal longitudinal crumple zone. In particular, in order to mitigate the compatibility issue, an active buckling control strategy is proposed which is able to apportion the collision energy in a more appropriate manner.
It has been a pleasure to be involved with the two-part special issue based on the InstMC Mini-Symposium, and I wish to acknowledge the enthusiasm of the authors and co-authors of the papers. The topic Developments in Control within the Automotive Industry is an area of immense growth in engineering and represents a cross-cutting theme through regional and national boundaries, and an area where the Institute could take on an active role in the future with international impact.