Cardiff School of Technologies>Staff Profiles>Jon Platts
Jon Platts

Professor Jon Platts

Department: Senior Management

Office/Location: Cardiff School of Technologies, Llandaff Campus

Telephone: +44 (0) 29 2041 7174

Email: jplatts@cardiffmet.ac.uk

Staff Overview

Professor Jon Platts is the Dean of Cardiff School of Technologies at Cardiff Metropolitan University and Professor of Autonomous Systems. Jon took up this role following careers in the UK Royal Air Force and industry research and development.

Jon was the Head of Autonomy for QinetiQ for 13 years, shaping the direction of research programmes and co-ordinating multi-organisation teams (from QinetiQ, Dstl, BAE Systems, Thales UK, the Military and Academia) as well as multi-disciplinary teams within QinetiQ. Jon holds a BEng in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from the University of Bradford, an MSc in Aerosystems Engineering and a PhD in Self organising fuzzy logic, both from Loughborough University.

He is a Chartered Engineer and Fellow of the Institution of Engineering and Technology and a member of both the Institution of Measurement and Control and the International Council on Systems Engineering.

Teaching

​For 6 years Jon was the principal lecturer in Control Engineering at the RAF College Cranwell where he taught post graduate engineering officers up to MSc. Within his own company, Muretex, he designed and delivered a module on Avionic Systems for 3rd students on the Aerospace Engineering course at the University of Leicester. As Dean of the school he oversees the broadening of the school of technologies portfolio of programmes to include Integrated Masters courses in engineering and Degree Apprenticeships as well as additional computer science related courses. 

Research

​Jon has had commercial success with his own company Muretex, winning significant, nationally competed, research grant funding; including Innovate UK funding for Robotics and Autonomous Systems. He has international contacts and reach, having proposed and chaired 2 European research action groups over 8 years and been invited to deliver a NATO lecture series on autonomy. His current research interests lie at the intersection of systems engineering practices and the capture of requirements for human-machine teaming in autonomous systems to ensure that levels of autonomy are appropriate to meet overall system needs. 

Key Publications

  1. Morales R. M., Turner M. C., Platts J. T., McCallum A. T., Pugh D., Control design of a tilting mechanism for the UK National Rotor Test Rig Facility, In Preparation for European Rotorcraft Forum 2017.
  2. Baxter J. W., Findlay S., Paxton M., Berry, A., Platts J. T., "Scheduling UAV Surveillance Tasks, Lessons Learnt from Trials with Users", Proceedings of the 2013 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics
  3. Platts, J. T., Findlay, S. J., Berry, Berry, A. J., Keirl, H. J., "Person to Purpose" Manpower Architecture Applied to a Highly Autonomous UAS Cloud", Volume 8020 of the Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer Verlag, Jul 2013
  4. Platts, J T, Whitby J A, Richards D, A Human Centric Design Process for Highly Autonomous Unmanned Air Systems, SCI-208, Educational Paper in support of NATO Lecture Series SCI-208, Sep 2009
  5. Platts J T, Cummings M L, Kerr R J, Applicability of STANAG 4586 to Future Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, AIAA 2007-2753, Infotech@Aerospace 2007 Conference and Exhibit, Rohnert Park Sonoma, California, 7 - 10 May 2007,
  6. Platts, J. T., The application of self-organising fuzzy logic control to station keeping in unmanned air vehicles. The Aeronautical Journal, Jul 01.

Other Projects and activities

​In his current role Jon leads the multi-million pound Cardiff School of Technologies development, to further establish Cardiff Metropolitan University as a world leader within the tech industry. The school will continue to grow its footprint on the Llandaff campus and teaching and research within the school will focus on key areas suffering significant skills gaps such as data science, cyber security, electronics, robotics, artificial intelligence, the internet of things and autonomous systems engineering.

External Links

  • ​Accreditor for the Institute of Engineering and Technology's academic accreditation activities.
  • A board member of Sêr Cymru National Research Network in Advanced Engineering and Materials
  • Member of the FinTech Wales advisory panel