The Development of Neural Network Based System Identification ...

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I believe that I am truly privileged to participate in this fascinating and challenging
project as a research member since 2009. I would like to express my deepest gratitude
to my supervisor Professor Dr. XiaoQi Chen, who has guided and encouraged my work
with such passion and sincerity for knowledge, teaching and care.
I am pleased to acknowledge the financial support from Ministry of Higher Education
(MOHE), Malaysia and Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia (UTHM) under Academic
Training Scheme (SLAB) for conference travel fund and scholarship awarded.
I would like to thank my research fellows in Mechatronics Research Laboratory
for their help, advice and cooperation for many years. I would like to thank Mervin
Chandrapal, Rejina Choi, Stefan Schalk 1 , Bob Thijssen 1 , Christopher Geelen 1 , Julien
Pain 2 , Aaron Gamble, Peter Tan, Elijah Philips and Bridget Dean for encouraging
and supporting my research efforts in LabVIEW R○ programming, system identification
and control theories, unmanned helicopter system integration and test rig system
development. I would like to thank the technicians in Mechanical Engineering Department,
University of Canterbury, in particular, Julian Murphy and David Read for their
invaluable assistance and support to my research project.
My special thanks go to my family. I would like to thank my parents, who taught
me to take chances for better things in my life. Also my gratitude to my wife, who
has offered me unconditional love, understanding and sacrifices during the period of
my study. In retrospect, this project did start humble but has grown to be a success.
There are many happy times and many disappointing moments, but now I am very
happy because all the hardship I had to go through mostly alone finally paid off.
1 Department of Electrical Engineering, Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands
2 Mechanical Engineering Department, INSA de Rouen, France