PhD Studentship in Augmented Reality based Navigation and Mapping for Pedestrians

Location of position

London

Duration of Studentship

4 Years

Stipend

Fully funded 4-year PhD studentship, with a £17,609 per annum tax free stipend in Year 1, rising with inflation.

Vacancy Information

Leading tech companies are investing in smartphone based augmented reality (Google, Apple, Facebook, Snap, etc.). This technology is primarily focussed on gamified AR with limited specifications including locally consistent 3D representations of the environment. While these are exciting technologies to work with, there remains scope for enhancing navigation in dense urban environments. The proposed PhD will develop a framework to fuse smartphone AR technology with high-quality geospatial data to aid pedestrian urban navigation. This PhD will look at opportunities particular in the following areas: 

·      Using existing mapping products to ensure globally consistent 3D representations of the environment.

·      Establishing suitable long-term persistent landmarks.

·      Integrating existing OS POI data into the AR system.

·      Automatically generating new POI data from phone video using Deep Learning technology.

The project is a collaboration with Ordnance Survey, the national mapping agency for Great Britain which records and keeps 500 million geospatial features up to date in their mapping products. This PhD builds on UCL Geomatics’ established research expertise in robust pedestrian navigation technology using GNSS and signals of opportunity; 3D point cloud generation and processing; Object recognition from point clouds and imagery and geospatial data analysis. We can leverage this expertise to establish a test bed for pedestrian navigation in London.

Studentship Description

Fully funded 4-year PhD studentship, with a £17,609 per annum tax free stipend in Year 1, rising with inflation.

Person Specification

The successful applicant is expected to have completed an excellent university degree in Geomatics, Computer Science or a related field. The applicant should have a strong background in at least one of the following areas: geomatics, navigation, augmented reality, photogrammetry, machine learning.

Eligibility

To be eligible for fees at the UK rate, you must normally be a national of the UK (or in specified cases the family member of a UK national), be ordinarily resident in the UK on the first day of the first academic year of your programme and have been ordinarily resident within the UK, the Republic of Ireland, the specified British overseas territories or the Channel Islands/Isle of Man (the “Islands”) for the three year period before the first day of the first academic year of your programme.

Applicants should send a covering letter and CV to Jan Boehm ([Email Address Removed]) and apply online to UCL by submitting the PhD application form available via Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering MPhil/PhD UCL Graduate degrees - UCL – University College London. 

Please name Dr. Jan Boehm and Dr. James Haworth as the proposed supervisors. 

Contact name

Dr. Jan Boehm

Contact details

[Email Address Removed]

Closing Date

14 Nov 2021

Interview date

TBC

Studentship Start Date

10th January 2022