Course summary

This MSc Control, Automation and Artificial Intelligence Course is designed to provide a unique route for postgraduates to top up their background with more specialised knowledge and skills in the rich field of control systems and engineering relevant to various practical industries as well as research in academia. The course covers the three closely relevant fields as pathways within one umbrella. Those pathways are Control Engineering Pathway, Automation Pathway and Intelligent Systems Pathway. All pathways will start with common modules in Semester 1, to offer a greater degree of flexibility for students to explore their main interest as they enrol into the course. Then each pathway will deliver specialised modules in Semester 2, allowing students to focus on specialised subjects based on their interest. This specialisation then continues being reflected in the students’ dissertation project, which is carried out in Semester 3. This course will provide a combination of theoretical and practical modules with sufficient depth, giving graduates sufficiently strong skills and background to take up professional posts in control engineering and automation industry and/or research, and to develop themselves further depending on the requirement of the profession. Staff involved in the delivery of this course are actively involved in collaborative research within academia and with industry, as well as consultancy undertaken within Coventry University’s multidisciplinary Research Institute for Future Transport and Cities. Consequently, students may also gain significant benefits from the fact that the taught materials are based on state-of–the-art techniques and technologies, and the experience gained during the project component benefits from the close relationship with industrial collaborators. The common modules are devised to introduce students to key concepts and analytical approaches as well as the empirical focus of the course. The modules also pave strong programming and simulation skills for students. These common skills will together provide strong background for students to get deeper into more specialised and advanced modules in each pathway they choose. There are opportunities for students to gain experience from these close relationships with industry. Our portfolio of projects includes collaboration with Jaguar Land Rover in low carbon emission and hybrid vehicles; optimisation and control applied to radiotherapy treatment with the University Hospital Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust; control for NOx emission reduction with Ricardo UK; power systems monitoring with ABB; and mechatronics hardware development with National Instruments. Where appropriate, research seminars, including staff, research students, and external guest speakers from industry are invited to provide a lecture / presentation to supplement and reinforce the practical relevance of the material. In addition, students are also encouraged to attend externally organised seminars, workshops, training or internships to gain wider knowledge and experience, as well as build their professional network. Students in this course come from various engineering backgrounds from the UK, EU and other countries in the world. This pathway is open for both full time and part time students.