Applications are invited for a funded 3.5-year PhD studentship in multi-vehicle routing problems.
Our project will develop an integrated multi-vehicle routing and trajectory planning method for environments that change based on the operations of the vehicles. This is particularly relevant for mining applications, where new routes open up as parts of the mine are dug out, or some routes become blocked due to the pile of excess material produced by drilling vehicles. Other applications including inspection of complex structures and routing for crop harvesting have a similar problem structure.
We aim to investigate hybrid optimization methods in operational research to address this unconventional routing problem in a general way. This project will extend the state-of-the-art by establishing a novel formalization of a dynamic routing problem where both extension and contraction of the routes are possible. More importantly, this project will be an important step in increasing the level of automation obtainable for robots operating in harsh environments, in which human workers are exposed to hazardous conditions.
The successful candidate will join the Intelligent Robotics Lab at the School of Computer Science, University of Birmingham and School of Computing and Information Systems at the University of Melbourne. You will be jointly supervised by
Dr Masoumeh Mansouri (https://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~mansourm)
Dr Nir Lipovetzky (https://cis.unimelb.edu.au/people/staff.php?person_ID=565558)
Prof Peter Stuckey (https://cis.unimelb.edu.au/people/staff.php?person_ID=14142)
Requirements:
Applicants should have a first-class or good upper second in Computer Science or closely related field. Applicants also need to have a strong background in mathematics and high proficiency in programming, e.g., Python, C++ or Java. An MSc project in AI planning and search, multi-agent decision making, combinatorial optimization or constraint-base programming related area would be beneficial but not essential.
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