Cooperation

External collaboration is vital to the research strategy of DCSC. In fundamental research, collaborations are mostly entered into with the international academic community, while in the three technology domains, emphasis is on industrial, institutional and academic partners in the respective application areas. Particular examples of three long-term industrial collaboration partners are Philips Applied Technologies, SKF and Shell.

Philips

For over fifteen years, Philips has sponsored active collaboration on a whole variety of PhD projects. These have focused on making further progress on and applying advanced identification and controller design algorithms for high-precision mechatronic motion systems, such as nano-meter position control in wafer-scanners.

SKF

SKF is a similar long-term direct industrial partner, involved via the European Marie Curie programme in financing diverse projects in the area of control-related issues in the emerging X-by-wire technology for automotives.

Shell

A third example involves collaboration with Shell, which looks to DCSC for control expertise within the Integrated Systems Approach to Petroleum Production (ISAPP) cluster. Here the goal is to use model-based decision and control strategies for best effect in efforts to increase the yield from their oil-fields. Other external (industrial) collaborations are undertaken either as nine-month MSc projects or as four-year PhD projects.

Other partners

Other industrial/institutional partners include, among others, Océ Nederland B.V. (NL), TNO (NL), Embedded Systems Institute (NL), Dutch Aerospace Laboratory NLR (NL), Veeco (USA), European Space Agency, ESTEC (NL), Siemens (Germany/NL), Renault Direction de la Recherche (France), KTH Royal Institute of Technology (Sweden), MicroNed consortium (NL), British Aerospace (UK), IOP Adaptive Optics (NL), BASF (Germany).