Distributed Control Strategies for Connected & Autonomous Vehicles and Corresponding Testing Environment

Communication between vehicles and between vehicles-and-infrastructure provides new opportunities in different aspects of vehicle control and traffic management. Connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs) are smart cars that talk to each other and to the transportation infrastructure.

The main research question of this project is to investigate whether the exchanged information between vehicles and vehicle-to-infrastructure can be useful to improve energy consumption, emission levels and travelling time of a bunch of adjacent CAVs.

You will investigate distributed decision-making frameworks and design a novel collaborative one for a bunch of adjacent CAVs passing through a junction, to systematically exploit the neighbors’ information and improve the above-mentioned performance criteria.

For this aim, you will also investigate available open-source and commercial simulation environment and design a novel close-to-real environment for testing your designed framework with multiple CAVs.

You will hold a first or second degree in computer science or automotive/mechanical/electrical/software engineering. Also, you will have a background or some knowledge in programming in general and C/C++, MATLAB or Python in particular. Scientific programming in Python and working with open-source tools in Linux could have extra advantage.

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How to apply:
Apply online for a full time PhD in Engineering using our step by step guide (http://www.sussex.ac.uk/study/phd/apply).

Please clearly state on your application form that you are applying for the ’Distributed Control Strategies for Connected & Autonomous Vehicles and Corresponding Testing Environment’ Scholarship.