Tom P.J. van der Sande was born in Boxtel, The Netherlands in 1986. He received his B.Sc. (with great appreciation) in Mechanical Engineering and M.Sc (with great appreciation) degree in Automotive Technology at Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands. As a part of this education he carried out an Internship at Waterloo University in Waterloo, Canada where he worked on pulsed active steering for rollover mitigation. His master thesis research concerned the control of a fully active suspension system for a road vehicle and was performed in collaboration with the electrical engineering faculty.
In May 2011, Tom started his PhD research in the Dynamics and Control group at the department of Mechanical Engineering of Eindhoven University of Technology under the supervision of Prof. H. Nijmeijer and Dr. I. Besselink. His research was part of HTAS project entitled VERIFIED II, focusing on control of vehicle safety features. His main topics were the control of semi-active suspension systems and steer-by-wire.
Over the last five years I have focused on control of vehicles. During my PhD the primary focus of my research was on the control of in vehicle actuators with a strong focus on the vertical dynamics. I have developed and published a framework for the synthesis of the optimal controller, taking into account practical limitations. Tests on a self-developed vehicle showed a significant comfort improvement of over 10%. Besides solely control of the vertical dynamics I have looked at the control of steer-by-wire and the integration of it with the vertical dynamics.
In my post-doc my focus has moved towards cooperative and autonomous driving. To that end I’ve co-authored the i-CAVE NWO perspectief proposal. I am currently working within this project focusing cooperative and automated vehicles and the overall safety concept related to the design of an automated vehicle. Besides that, I have kept the research into the vertical dynamics of vehicles open through collaboration with industrial partners. Currently I’m submitting a paper regarding the estimation and control of the dynamic tire compression.
In my research I strive to establish a strong coupling between a thorough theoretical basis and a clear practical implementation. I believe that within automotive research there is no substitute for testing in real environments, since there is always a human in the loop and driving circumstances are ever changing. This coupling between theory and practice runs like a common thread through my academic career and I feel the need to continue this within my research.