- Are you passionate about advancing sustainable mobility solutions?
- Are you eager to work on the intersection of AI, optimization, and energy management?
- Are you interested to apply and valorize scientific results in this field in electrified mobility, together with a highly innovative company?
Then, we are looking for you!
InformationWe invite highly motivated students with a strong background in mathematical system theory, data science and control to apply for a PhD position within the
Control Systems Technology (CST) section at the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Eindhoven University of Technology. The mission of the CST section is to develop new methods and tools in the area of Systems Theory, Control Engineering and Mechatronics. The research focuses on understanding the fundamental system properties that determine the performance of mechanical engineering systems, and exploiting this knowledge for the design of the high-tech systems of the future. In the Automotive research line, our research is committed to accelerate the introduction of smart and green mobility by self-learning control for future powertrains.
Driven by societal concerns about global warming and local air quality, the focus on electric vehicles continues to grow. To further accelerate their adoption, key challenges such as charging infrastructure, range anxiety, and affordability must be effectively addressed. For their control systems, this means energy efficiency, operational costs, vehicle range and battery life have to optimized while maintaining passenger comfort. In practice, the performance of charging strategies is limited due to model uncertainties and unknown disturbances. As a result, there is an urgent need for early anomaly detection (e.g. failure in thermal and battery system) and risk averse charging strategies. This project tackles the integration of early anomaly detection, prediction of long term vehicle usage, and charge management in electric vehicles using AI techniques. This is applied to an innovative, revolutionary use case: wireless charging method (so called Dynamic Wireless Power Transfer (DWPT)), enabling real-time, coordinated charging for multiple EVs during driving.
Within the project, your research will focus on:
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Smart and early anomaly detection with limited labeled data and health states monitoring, using high-fidelity simulations, (generative) probabilistic AI models, transfer learning, physics-informed AI, and semi-supervised learning;
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Accurate and robust energy consumption and demand prediction, using advanced neural architectures, transfer learning, and physics-informed hybrid models to efficiently process long time-series data and reduce training data requirements across diverse operational domains;
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Intelligent multi-vehicle DWPT charging optimization, using energy-aware recommendations and coordinated control via reinforcement learning and model predictive techniques to reduce driver anxiety and enhance traffic flow;
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Performance evaluation and system validationvia high-fidelity simulations, Hardware-in-the-Loop setups, and demonstration vehicles in collaboration with the industry partner.
The developed AI-driven classification, prediction and control strategies will support the sustainable, scalable deployment of electric mobility solutions.
This position will help you to build both a strong academic and industrial research profile. You will have access to the graduate courses at the Dutch Institute of Systems and Control (DISC) and will have the opportunity to collaborate with industry and academic researchers worldwide. By joining us, you will be part of a vibrant community of more than 60 researchers including faculty members, postdocs and PhDs working on diverse topics in the field of dynamical systems and control and its applications.
This PhD position is jointly supervised by professor Frank Willems and professor Emilia Silvas.