School of Electronic, Electrical and Systems Engineering

Dr.-Ing. Thomas Steffen was a research associate in the control systems group. His research interests include fault tolerant control, model based design, the use of optimisation in control, stochastic methods, and technical programming. He is organising the control group seminars and socials, and he is involved in the redesign of the departmental web site.

His last project was High Redundancy Actuator, which investigates novel ways of using a specific system structure together with fault tolerant control to increase the reliability of mechanical actuation. The idea is similar to a muscle: many small actuation elements (such as muscle fibres) contribute to the overall actuation task. Since the contribution of each element is small, faults in individual elements have little effect on the overall system.

He has now started a lectureship in the Department of Aeronautical and Automotive Engineering. He is a member of the Dynamics and Control, where he contributes to the teaching of the , where he contributes to the Control Engineering module.

Expertise
Advanced actuator technologies
Communications
MIMO systems
Fault tolerant control
Feedback control systems analysis and design
Robust control

Keywords







Structural Analysis

Graduated from the Technical University of Ilmenau, Germany after a year abroad at the University of Manchester, Institute of Science and technology (UMIST) with a Diplom (BEng) in Electrical Engineering/Automation and Control in 1999. Worked as a research assistant at the Technical University of Hamburg-Harburg (TUHH), Germany and at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany, where he obtained his doctorate degree in 2004 for a novel approach on reconfiguration in fault tolerant control. Worked for the telecom infrastructure company mBalance (international) BV, Amsterdam as a technical consultant until 2006. Joined Loughborough University as a Research Associate in January 2007, and became Lecturer in 2010.

Research Interests and Activities

• Physical Modelling (deductive approach)
• Geometric Approach to Control Theory
• Structural Models and Structural Analysis
• Predictive Control and Optimal Control
• Rapid Prototyping/Hardware in the Loop
• Communication Networks in Control
• Fault Tolerant Control, especially reconfiguration and actuator faults