The CDT proposal 'Fuel Cells and their Fuels - Clean Power for the 21st Century' is a focused and structured programme to train >52 students within 9 years in basic principles of the subject and guide them in conducting their PhD theses. This initiative answers the need for developing the human resources well before the demand for trained and experienced engineering and scientific staff begins to strongly increase towards the end of this decade. Market introduction of fuel cell products is expected from 2015 and the requirement for effort in developing robust and cost effective products will grow in parallel with market entry. The consortium consists of the Universities of Birmingham (lead), Nottingham, Loughborough, Imperial College and University College of London. Ulster University is added as a partner in developing teaching modules. The six Centre directors and the 60+ supervisor group have an excellent background of scientific and teaching expertise and are well established in national and international projects and Fuel Cell, Hydrogen and other fuel processing research and development. The Centre programme consists of seven compulsory taught modules worth 70 credit points, covering the four basic introduction modules to Fuel Cell and Hydrogen technologies and one on Safety issues, plus two business-oriented modules which were designed according to suggestions from industry partners. Further - optional - modules worth 50 credits cover the more specialised aspects of Fuel Cell and fuel processing technologies, but also include socio-economic topics and further modules on business skills that are invaluable in preparing students for their careers in industry. The programme covers the following topics out of which the individual students will select their area of specialisation: - electrochemistry, modelling, catalysis; - materials and components for low temperature fuel cells (PEFC, 80 and 120 -130 degC), and for high temperature fuel cells (SOFC) operating at 500 to 800 degC; - design, components, optimisation and control for low and high temperature fuel cell systems; including direct use of hydrocarbons in fuel cells, fuel processing and handling of fuel impurities; integration of hydrogen systems including hybrid fuel-cell-battery and gas turbine systems; optimisation, control design and modelling; integration of renewable energies into energy systems using hydrogen as a stabilising vector; - hydrogen production from fossil fuels and carbon-neutral feedstock, biological processes, and by photochemistry; hydrogen storage, and purification; development of low and high temperature electrolysers; - analysis of degradation phenomena at various scales (nano-scale in functional layers up to systems level), including the development of accelerated testing procedures; - socio-economic and cross-cutting issues: public health, public acceptance, economics, market introduction; system studies on the benefits of FCH technologies to national and international energy supply. The training programme can build on the vast investments made by the participating universities in the past and facilitated by EPSRC, EU, industry and private funds. The laboratory infrastructure is up to date and fully enables the work of the student cohort. Industry funding is used to complement the EPSRC funding and add studentships on top of the envisaged 52 placements. The Centre will emphasise the importance of networking and exchange of information across the scientific and engineering field and thus interacts strongly with the EPSRC-SUPERGEN Hub in Fuel Cells and Hydrogen, thus integrating the other UK universities active in this research area, and also encourage exchanges with other European and international training initiatives. The modules will be accessible to professionals from the interacting industry in order to foster exchange of students with their peers in industry.

Autonomous vehicles (AVs) must be controlled by software, and such software thus has responsibility for safe vehicle behaviour. It is therefore essential that we rigorously test such software. This is difficult to do for AVs, as they have to respond appropriately to a great diversity of external situations as they go about their missions. It is possible to find faults in an AV software specification by testing its behaviour in a variety of external situations, either in reality or in computer simulation. Such testing may reveal that the specification ignores certain situations (e.g. negotiating a motorway contraflow lane) or defines behaviour that is unsafe in a subset of situations (e.g. its policy for adapting to icy surfaces leads to unsafe speed control in crowded urban environments). This project will test the hypothesis that testing based on coverage of possible external situations ("situation coverage") is an effective means of finding AV specification faults. We will test the hypothesis by creating a tool that generates situations for simulated AVs, both randomly and using heuristic search, and assessing whether higher situation coverage correlates with greater success at revealing seeded specification faults. (For the search, the fitness function will be based on the situation coverage achieved) The project will draw on previous work on test coverage measures, on search-based testing, and on automated scenario generation in training simulations. To assess the effectiveness of the approach, we will use a small but practically-motivated case study of an autonomous ground vehicle, informed by the advice of an advisory panel set up for this project.

The CDT in Advanced Automotive Propulsion Systems will produce the graduates who will bring together the many technical disciplines and skills needed to allow propulsion systems to transition to a more sustainable future. By creating an environment for our graduates to research new propulsion systems and the wider context within which they sit, we will form the individuals who will lead the scientific, technological, and behavioural changes required to effect the transformation of personal mobility. The CDT will become an internationally leading centre for interdisciplinary doctoral training in this critical field for UK industrial strategy. We will train a cohort of 84 high quality research leaders, adding value to academia and the UK automotive industry. There are three key aspects to the success of the CDT - First, a diverse range of graduates will be recruited from across the range of first degrees. Graduates in engineering (mechanical, electrical, chemical), sciences (physics, chemistry, mathematics, biology), management and social sciences will be recruited and introduced to the automotive propulsion sector. The resulting skills mix will allow transformational research to be conducted. Second, the training given to this cohort, re-enforced by a strong group working ethos, will prepare the graduates to make an effective contribution to the industry. This will require training in the current and future methods (technical and commercial) used by the industry. We also need the graduates to have highly developed interpersonal skills and to be experienced in effective group working. Understanding how people and companies work is just as important as an understanding the technology. On the technology side, a broad system level understanding of the technology landscape and the relationship between the big picture and the graduate's own expertise is essential. We have designed a programme that enriches the student's knowledge and experience in these key areas. Third, underpinning all of these attributes will be the graduate's research skills, acquired through the undertaking of an intensive research project within the new £60 million Institute for Advanced Automotive Propulsion Systems (IAAPS), designed from the outset to provide a rich collaborative environment and add value to the UK economy. IAAPS will be equipped with world leading experimental facilities designed for future powertrain systems and provides dedicated space for industry and academia to collaborate to deliver research valued at over £100 million during the lifetime of the CDT. The cohort will contribute to and benefit from this knowledge development, providing opportunities to conduct research at a whole system level. This will address one of the most pressing challenges of our age - the struggle to provide truly sustainable, affordable, connected, zero emissions transport needed by both industrialised and emerging economies. To enable these benefits we request funding for 40 studentships and the infrastructure to provide a world class training environment. The university will enhance this through the funding of an additional 20 studentships and access to research facilities, together valued at £5 million. Cash and in-kind contributions from industrial partners valued at a total of £4.5 million will enhance the student experience, providing 9 fully funded PhD places and 30 half funded places. The research undertaken by the students will be co-created and supervised by our industrial partners. The people and research outputs that from the CDT will be adopted directly by these industrial partners to generate lasting real world impact.

Autonomous systems, such as medical systems, autonomous aerial and road vehicles, and manufacturing and agricultural robots, promise to extend and expand human capacities. But their benefits will only be harnessed if people have trust in the human processes around their design, development, and deployment. Enabling designers, engineers, developers, regulators, operators, and users to trace and allocate responsibility for the decisions, actions, failures, and outcomes of autonomous systems will be essential to this ecosystem of trust. If a self-driving car takes an action that affects you, you will want to know who is responsible for it and what are the channels for redress. If you are a doctor using an autonomous system in a clinical setting, you will want to understand the distribution of accountability between you, the healthcare organisation, and the developers of the system. Designers and engineers need clarity about what responsibilities fall on them, and when these transfer to other agents in the decision-making network. Manufacturers need to understand what they would be legally liable for. Mechanisms to achieve this transparency will not only provide all stakeholders with reassurance, they will also increase clarity, confidence, and competence amongst decision-makers. The research project is an interdisciplinary programme of work - drawing on the disciplines of engineering, law, and philosophy - that culminates in a methodology to achieve precisely that tracing and allocation of responsibility. By 'tracing responsibility' we mean the process of tracking the autonomous system's decisions or outcomes back to the decisions of designers, engineers, or operators, and understanding what led to the outcome. By 'allocating responsibility' we mean both allocating role responsibilities to different agents across the life-cycle and working out in advance who would be legally liable and morally responsible for different system decisions and outcomes once they have occurred. This methodology will facilitate responsibility-by-design and responsibility-through-lifecycle. In practice, the tracing and allocation of responsibility for the decisions and outcomes of AS is very complex. The complexity of the systems and the constant movement and unpredictability of their operational environments makes individual causal contributions difficult to distinguish. When this is combined with the fact that we delegate tasks to systems that require ethical judgement and lawful behaviour in human beings, it also gives rise to potential moral and legal responsibility gaps. The more complex and autonomous the system is, the more significant the role that assurance will play in tracing and allocating responsibility, especially in contexts that are technically and organisationally complex. The research project tackles these challenges head on. First, we clarify the fundamental concepts of responsibility, the different kinds of responsibility in play, the different agents involved, and where 'responsibility gaps' arise and how they can be addressed. Second, we build on techniques used in the technical assurance of high-risk systems to reason about responsibility in the context of uncertainty and dynamism, and therefore unpredictable socio-technical environments. Together, these strands of work provide the basis for a methodology for responsibility-by-design and responsibility-through-lifecycle that can be used in practice by a wide range of stakeholders. Assurance of responsibility will be achieved that not only identifies which agents are responsible for which outcomes and in what way throughout the lifecycle, and explains how this identification is achieved, but also establishes why this tracing and allocation of responsibility is well-justified and complete.

VISION: To create, run and exploit the world's leading research programme in mobile autonomy addressing fundamental technical issues which impede large scale commercial and societal adoption of mobile robotics. AMBITION: We need to build better robots - we need them to be cheap, work synergistically with people in large, complex and time-changing environments and do so for long periods of time. Moreover, it is essential that they are safe and trusted. We are compelled as researchers to produce the foundational technologies that will see robots work in economically and socially important domains. These motivations drive the science in this proposal. STRATEGY: Robotics is fast advancing to a point where autonomous systems can add real value to the public domain. The potential reach of mobile robotics in particular is vast, covering sectors as diverse as transport, logistics, space, defence, agriculture and infrastructure management. In order to realise this potential we need our robots to be cheap, work synergistically with people in large, complex and time-changing environments and do so robustly for long periods of time. Our aim, therefore, is to create a lasting, catalysing impact on UKPLC by growing a sustainable centre of excellence in mobile autonomy. A central tenet to this research is that the capability gap between the state of the art and what is needed is addressed by designing algorithms that leverage experiences gained through real and continued world use. Our machines will operate in support of humans and seamlessly integrate into complex cyber-physical systems with a variety of physical and computational elements. We must, therefore, be able to guarantee, and even certify, that the software that controls the robots is safe and trustworthy by design. We will engage in this via a range of flagship technology demonstrators in different domains (transport, logistics, space, etc.), which will mesh the research together, giving at once context, grounding, validation and impact.