Exploration of Techniques to Improve Reliability and Security of Autonomous Vehicles (SAM29)

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Project detail
Automotive systems are incorporating safety (e.g., automatic emergency braking) and emerging technologies (e.g., artificial intelligence, machine learning) aiming to enable the vehicles to efficiently react to hazards and unpredictable modifications in their environment. Applications running on such systems differ in terms of security, reliability, performance and power requirements. Depending on their needs, such applications can be assigned to different processors to achieve, for instance, spatial isolation between safety critical and non-safety critical functions. Although using reliable and secure hardware components is key to its success, the software side of autonomous vehicles is where the most challenging design challenges lay. Thus, automotive engineers must develop not only more performance efficient software architectures to make fast runtime decisions, but also more reliable and secure software stacks aiming to guarantee a failsafe system operation.

The aim of this PhD research is to investigate novel cost-effective techniques and software architectures that can be used to improve the reliability and security of the emerging multi-core autonomous vehicle systems.

Start date of studentship: 01 Oct 2020.
Entry requirements
Applicants should have, or expect to achieve, at least a 2:1 Honours degree (or equivalent) in electrical or computer engineering or closely related field or a related subject. A relevant Master’s degree and/or experience in one or more of the following will be an advantage: strong and solid background in operating systems, compilation, simulation, embedded and multicore systems.
How to apply
All applications should be made online at http://www.lboro.ac.uk/study/apply/research/. Under programme name, select ‘Mechanical, Electrical & Manufacturing Engineering’.

Please quote reference number: SAM29