Self-healing Cellular Architectures for Biologically-inspired Highly Reliable Electronic Systems (SA
BRISTOL ROBOTICS LABORATORY
BRISTOL INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
FACULTY OF ENVIRONMENT AND TECHNOLOGY
SABRE is a collaborative research project between the Bio-inspired Electronic Systems (BES) group of BRL at the University of the West of England and the University of York. The aim of the project is to further our understanding and to adapt biological processes found in living beings in our pursuit of designing reliable electronic systems with an ever increasing level of complexity. The research will aim to pave the way for a biologically inspired unique design approach for all electronics systems from communication, through computing and control, to systems operating in hostile environments.
Inspired by nature and with the objective to build reliable electronic systems on silicon that possess self-diagnostic and self-healing properties you will:
Evaluate and apply novel, biologically inspired processes and algorithms;
Investigate how properties of biological systems such as their multi-cellular nature, their evolutionary development and protective immune systems could be used to enhance reliability of digital electronic systems;
Adapt, incorporate and implement these ‘nature-like' fault-tolerance mechanisms into engineering systems.
In collaboration with other researchers you will meet the above objectives by:
Producing efficiently implemented fundamental cells with intrinsic self-repairing mechanisms and growth properties.
Model and emulate such cells using FPGA prototyping for an ultimate VLSI implementation;
Use multi-cellular development to create a new design approach based on cooperating cell groups;
Use innate immune system like response to supervise the self-repairing architecture at both intra-cellular and extra-cellular levels, so as to identify, predict and protect against errors;
Use FPGA based implementation to construct a demonstrator to illustrate the capabilities of the system in a service-robot application scenario.
The successful candidate will have an intimate knowledge in some or all the fields of
Design of digital circuits and systems
VLSI circuits and system design and the use of associated CAD tools (Mentor, Cadence etc)
Strong high level language programming, preferably in C/C++
Familiarity with hardware description language programming (VHDL, Verilog, Handel C etc.)
Genetic algorithms and evolutionary computation coupled with electronic hardware realisation.
This is a fixed term appointment for 3 years starting 1 October 2008.
The PhD studentship covers fees and pays a stipend for three years. The stipend for home/EU students will be £12,940 in the 2008/09 academic year with cost of living adjustments in Years 2 and 3. International students will need to pay the difference between the two fee rates from the stipend (leaving a stipend of approximately £6,700 in each year).
General information about the hosting laboratory can be found at: http://www.brl.ac.uk
For an informal discussion please contact Tony Pipe or Gabriel Dragffy on tel.: 0117 328 6330 or by E-mail Gabriel.Dragffy@brl.ac.uk or Tony.Pipe@brl.ac.uk
Application forms are available from Gabriel Dragffy and should be submitted with a full CV via email by 30th June 2008.
Interviews are likely to be held during the week 14th to 18th July 2008. If you have not heard from us by 10th June 2008 we regret that you have been unsuccessful in your application on this occasion.
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