Collision-free Trajectory Generation Algorithms for Autonomous Vehicles

Background to the Research
Collisions on road transport network are a major cause of fatalities claiming 1.3 million lives worldwide in 2011. Safety has therefore always been a top priority for the government and the vehicle industry. Despite the continuous improvement in driver training, education and licensing over time, 85% of collisions are still associated with driver error. Therefore, vehicles are increasingly being equipped with sensors (e.g. spatial map, location technologies, laser scanner, radar, event data recorder, and computing power) either to assist drivers or to eliminate humans in driving (i.e. driverless cars). The key question is: could these V2V communication, sensing and storage capabilities be better utilised to eliminate collisions in transport networks.

The Position
The School of Civil and Building Engineering at Loughborough University invites applications for a PhD studentship. The project aims to develop a range of real-time collision-free trajectory generation algorithms suitable for traffic conditions in which driverless vehicles would interact with human-driven vehicles.

As part of a large, growing and supportive research community within the School, the successful candidate will benefit from being a member of the University’s Graduate School and their extensive and targeted skills training for research students. The successful candidate will be joining a lively community of research students and staff, where doctoral students are given great academic and administrative support and are an integral part of the University's research culture. The successful candidate will jointly be supervised by Professor Quddus and Professor Bristow.

The studentship is open to graduates from numerate disciplines including Civil Engineering, Systems Engineering, Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Computer Science and Statistics who are interested in autonomous transport systems, data fusion and statistical modelling.