Control Engineering

In the 1980s, Professor Keith Glover and his collaborators established a mathematical formulation of this problem at a time of intense international activity in this area. The underlying mathematics came from the field of operator theory and in combination with new developments in control theory entirely new and computationally tractable solutions were derived. With North American co-authors he received the prestigous IEEE Baker prize for the best paper in all the 1989 journals of the IEEE for this work.

The methodology, known as H-infinity, has become widely used in application studies as diverse as short take off and landing aircraft and gas-fired power stations. The major control systems design packages are now used in industry and universities around the world. Within the Department, the methods have been very successfully applied in the flight control studies for the Harrier jump jet with, most unusually for a University group, two sets of test flights, and in automotive engine control work with the Ford Motor Company.

Harrier Jump Jet

MPEG videos: