The ENSAM is one of the leading Grande Ecole in Mechanical Engineering
The Laboratory of Material Physic and Mechanic LPMM is one of the most reknown laboratory in its field. It focus on material modelling, processing and their applications

Actuators are still one of the cornerstone of micro-mechanic. Some design using well known energy conversion (electromagnetic, electrostatic) are penalized due to scale effects or phenomenons which are neglected at usual scales.
An other possibility is to use local coupling exhibited by some materials such as piezoelectricity or thermo-mechanical coupling. The later effect is present in shape memory alloy, which are are of particular interset due to their large reversible strains (up to 8% for monocristals). Besides, to such scale, thermal time constant becomes small.
On the other hand, those materials are non-linear, and therefore most applications don't fully exploit their possibility (on-off actuators). To take full advantage of SMA, one must develop :
accurate model for design and control
accounting for hysteresis in particular
develop control strategies to tackle the non-linearities
As for the first point hysteresis models based on models developped in electromagnetics should be extended to the case of hysteresis depending on two variables (stress, temperature)
Concerning the second point, SMA are not only a challenging problem due to the hysteresis but also because this hysteresis will change with time according to the cycles the device will perform and the ageing of the material. Hence, the control law should not only be non linear, but also adaptative.
This thesis will explore two approaches :
the use of Neural Network coupled with standard non-linear method (feedback linearisation) [Schröder et al :"Intelligent Observer and Control Design for non linear systems", springer 2005
The use of classical controller (PID) which gains are rapidly updated using fast algebraic estimators (M. Fliess et al. ers une commande multivariable sans modèle. Actes Conf. Internat. Francoph. Automatique (CIFA), Bordeaux, 2006)

good knowledge of control engineering
reasonnable background in mechanic