T-B PHASE: Thales-Bristol Partnership in Hybrid Autonomous Systems Engineering
How the ILO helped
Dedicated project management provided by the ILO bridges the relationship between the University and the company, Thales Group, facilitating a partnership approach to the project. The PM plays a pro-active role in project planning and monitoring, ensuring management processes are applied in line with the needs of the project and the team’s working environment. The PM ensures that project funders and key stakeholders are kept informed and can engage with the project effectively.
Overview
The Thales-Bristol Partnership in Hybrid Autonomous Systems Engineering (T-B PHASE) is an EPSRC/Industry-funded five-year Prosperity Partnership between the University of Bristol and Thales Group. The project aims to develop new methods and technologies to help understand and overcome barriers to deploying smart, autonomous technologies in settings that involve close inter-operation with people.
T-B PHASE brings together academic and industrial expertise in robotics, AI, and systems engineering. It targets fundamental autonomous system design problems in the context of three real-world Thales use cases: Hybrid Low-Level Flight, Hybrid Rail Systems, and Hybrid Search & Rescue.
The project team comprises an academic and industrial PI; three Co-Investigators, and ten postdoctoral research associates, industrial researchers and PhD students.
Project management support to T-B PHASE has been provided by the Industrial Liaison Office since the launch of the project in 2017, with additional support provided by dedicated Partnership Managers at both Thales and the University via the Thales-Bristol Strategic Agreement.
Impact
Key outcomes to date include:
- Engagement with Use Case Domain Experts from Thales Group to scope the landscape for the research;
- Presentation of research to academic, industrial and Governmental audiences, reaching a wide range of stakeholders beyond the immediate project team;
- Training of future systems specialists through the Masters programme under the FARSCOPE CDT which will extend to PhD level research over the project period;
- Increased research understanding which will be explored alongside specific Use Cases within the company, including:
o Identification of the benefits of implementing autonomous self-monitoring at the sensory-motor level, the asset level and the system overview level;
o Development of multi-agent models to study different belief-revision operators which allow agents to revise their beliefs with both evidence from their environments, and with the beliefs of other agents;
o Implementation of an evolutionary algorithm with multiple sub-populations for solving a multi-Agent-Travelling Salesman Problem.
Get in touch
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Email: engf-ilo@bristol.ac.uk
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Email: engf-ilo@bristol.ac.uk