Chris Bennett

Email: zi18494@bristol.ac.uk

Supervisors: Jonathan Lawry and Seth Bullock

PhD Project Title: The use of structure to improve the robustness of multi-agent systems operating in open world environments

Research Group:

Biography

Studied at undergraduate and master’s level at Cambridge University Engineering Department, specialising in electrical power and control with additional courses in electronics, computer architecture and sensing techniques. Part of this was a 12-month master’s project in sensor design to measure microlitre fuel flow for a hybrid aircraft.

Four years working in hybrid power systems and vehicle electrification for Jaguar Land Rover. This included 2 years of a graduate scheme within manufacturing, research and commercial areas; followed by a substantive role developing a research created technology through to customer ready design. This was working as a system engineer, using tools to understand new designs and technologies at the high level with a focus on simulation, control and failure analysis. This was a fundamental part of the requirements based design process with the results used to create more robust, better engineered solutions.

Research Interests

Current research interests are focused on autonomous systems where multiple human and artificial agents are operating in a common space. In particular, how such systems can be made robust by predicting potential failures early and ultimately designing strategies to prevent them. A key part of this is taking inspiration from existing human based systems and the various “watchdog” style functions that either consciously or unconsciously used to prevent failure. As a further extension of this, whether such functions can be used to form a fundamental part of the perceived intelligence of a multiagent system.

These themes will form part of the hybrid autonomous systems project being undertaken as part of the first year of the CDT programme.