Architectural and Data Modelling for Robotic Applications

Robotics is a very exciting area of application; not only is it fun, but it also has potential for huge economic and social impact. A lot has been achieved, and a lot is expected to happen in the next decade or so. Software engineering techniques that provide appropriate and specific support for robot engineers, however, are few and far between.

This project will identify how robot engineers can use a diagrammatic notation to model and simulate data-intensive robotic applications. It will adopt and extend a domain-specific notation for mobile and autonomous robots called RoboChart. It is being developed under a five-year project involving a team of seven researchers in York, and collaborators worldwide (https://www.cs.york.ac.uk/circus/RoboCalc/).

Using RoboChart, we can define packages that specify data used and generated in a robotic system. We can also specify the design and deployment architectures of a system. This project will investigate commonly used design patterns and specialise the modelling, verification, and simulation techniques to deal with them. The outcome is a catalogue of design patterns described in RoboChart with associated verification and simulation approaches, whose feasibility is demonstrated by a number of example applications from the literature and industry.

Applications and examples are available from https://www.cs.york.ac.uk/circus/RoboCalc/ and the York Robotics Laboratory (https://www.york.ac.uk/robot-lab/).

RoboChart is supported by RoboTool (https://www.cs.york.ac.uk/circus/RoboCalc/robotool/) and is described in a reference manual ( http://barom.org.uk/robochart/documents/robochart-reference.pdf).

See recent publications on RoboChart in references section.

Research supervision
If successful, you will conduct your research under the supervision of Prof. Ana Cavalcanti (https://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/~alcc/). She holds a Royal Academy of Engineering Chair on Emerging Technologies to carry out work on Software Engineering for Robotics (https://www.raeng.org.uk/news/news-releases/2018/april/academy-funds-global-research-visionaries-to-advan). The project will contribute to that agenda of work and involve interaction with the industrial patterns in RoboCalc and in a new EPSRC project RoboTest (http://gow.epsrc.ac.uk/NGBOViewGrant.aspx?GrantRef=EP/R025479/1 and http://gow.epsrc.ac.uk/NGBOViewGrant.aspx?GrantRef=EP/R025134/1) .

To be considered for this funding you must:
meet the entrance requirements for a PhD in Computer Science,
be eligible to pay home/EU fees.

We will look favourably on applicants that can demonstrate knowledge of verification techniques and who have strong programming and mathematical skills.