This course has an extended research option: MSc Advanced Control and Systems Engineering with Extended Research
The MSc in Advanced Control and Systems Engineering is a multi-disciplinary subject, with applications across a wide range of industrial sectors.
The Control Systems Group in the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at The University of Manchester has been running an MSc course in Advanced Control and Systems Engineering since 1968.
The course is geared for graduates from a variety of scientific and engineering disciplines.
The aims of the course are to:
- provide advanced education in control and systems engineering
- emphasising modern theoretical developments and their practical application
- give a sound fundamental understanding of the principles
- underlying the operation of control systems
- enable students to apply modern control principles in various areas of industry
Students acquire a range of intellectual skills that cover the design, analysis and simulation of control systems. A strong emphasis is placed on practical and transferable skills through laboratory exercises and the use of software packages.
Course duration 12 months (full-time)
Accreditation This course is accredited by the Institution of Engineering and Technology
Total self-study time Approximately 40 hours per week (depending on individual background and learning needs)
Teaching time Approx. 20 hours of contact/course delivery time per week. Approx. 12 hours of teaching through live/recorded lectures and about 8 hour practical exercises per week
WHAT CAREER PATHWAYS ARE AVAILABLE TO ME?
Our graduates build successful careers across a diverse range of sectors. Many enter the energy and resources industries, working in mining, oil, gas, and chemicals, while others pursue careers in automation, robotics, consulting, manufacturing, construction, and government administration. Opportunities are also strong in pharmaceuticals, food and drink, computer software, and media. For those drawn to academia and research, the course provides a solid foundation for pursuing PhDs or research posts at leading universities. Equally, graduates interested in leadership and management find roles in project management, business development, and consultancy, applying their expertise to strategic and technical challenges worldwide.
WHAT ROLES HAVE GRADUATES SECURED?
Our alumni have secured positions including:
- Research Fellow
- Policy Officer
- Management Consultant
- Electrical Engineer
- Senior Process Control Engineer
- Lecturer
- Financial Accountant
- Business Development Manager
- Project Director
- Division Manager – Instrumentation
- Senior Manager – Industrial Engineering
This variety demonstrates the flexibility of the course, preparing you for technical, managerial, and research-based careers across multiple global industries.
OUR STUDENTS' MSc PROJECTS
The MSc project is one of the most exciting parts of a master’s degree — you are paired with an expert supervisor and get a chance to dive deep into a topic you’re passionate about, solve real-world problems, and bring your ideas to life. It’s where everything you’ve learned comes together, showcasing your skills, creativity, and potential to stand out in your field. Here are some projects that our MSc graduates have worked on:
🔎 Control Performance of Quanser Drone Under Fault Conditions
This project analysed the Quanser Aero 2 drone’s control performance under healthy and damaged propeller conditions. It implemented and compared PID, LQR, and Kalman Filter-based controllers to evaluate system stability, vibration, and fault tolerance.
🔎 Multi-Agent Consensus and Exploration Under Uncertainty This project developed a distributed reinforcement learning framework to enhance cooperation and exploration among agents under uncertainty. By combining Ensemble and Double Deep Q-Networks with uncertainty-guided exploration and consensus-based communication, it achieved faster convergence and more stable coordination than conventional methods.
🔎 Task-Priority Kinematic Control for Redundant Manipulators This project implemented and evaluated a hierarchical kinematic controller for a 7-DOF manipulator in CoppeliaSim using null space projection. It demonstrated how task ordering and weighting affect position accuracy, obstacle avoidance, and redundancy utilization, providing a reproducible framework for simulation-based manipulator control.
🔎 LQR-Based Formation Control for Multi-Agent Systems This project developed a graph-theoretic formation control framework using Linear Quadratic Regulation (LQR) for multi-agent systems. It optimized formation stability and obstacle avoidance through adaptive LQR parameter learning and Q-learning-based path planning, achieving efficient and coordinated formation tracking.
🔎 Gain-Scheduled Input Strictly Passive Control with Augmented State This project designed a gain-scheduled Input Strictly Passive controller enhanced with an augmented integral state for improved robustness and steady-state performance.
🔎 Robust Control of Ball-and-Beam Using FRM–DDPG This project developed an enhanced Deep Deterministic Policy Gradient (FRM–DDPG) method for robust control of a nonlinear ball-and-beam system. By integrating spectral normalisation, Lyapunov regularisation, domain randomisation, and a factorised reward mechanism, it achieved faster convergence, improved stability, and greater robustness to parameter variations.
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