Control engineering challenges for railway trains of the future

Railways in Europe have enjoyed something of a renaissance over the last decade or two, but further advances are needed to contribute more effectively to a nation's requirements for a sustainable transport system, leading to significant challenges in terms of performance, cost and reliability. The trains themselves are a critical part of the system and the lecture will assess the opportunities and present a vision for what rail vehicles of the future might look like, focussing particularly upon the important contributions that can be made by control, and the associated challenges for control engineering researchers.