WASP graduate school

The graduate school within WASP is dedicated to provide the skills needed to analyze, develop, and contribute to the interdisciplinary area of autonomous systems and software. The curriculum provides the foundations, perspectives, and state-of-the-art knowledge in the different disciplines taught by leading researchers in the field. Through an ambitious program with research visits, partner universities, and visiting lecturers, the graduate school actively supports forming a strong multi-disciplinary and international professional network between PhD-students, researchers and industry.

 

The graduate school provides added value on top of the existing PhD programs at the partner universities, providing unique opportunities for students who are dedicated to achieving international research excellence with industrial relevance.

 

Starting October 30, 2015 WASP recruited up to 26 graduate positions at the five partner universities: Linköping University, Lund University, Chalmers, KTH, and Umeå University.

 

The six PhD student positions at Chalmers are presented briefly below. For general questions concerning WASP and its graduate school please contact the Director of WASP Graduate School Fredrik Heintz (fredrik.heintz@liu.se). For general questions concerning WASP at Chalmers please contact Prof David Sands.

 

 

 

In the WASP project Software Engineering for Smart Systems, Chalmers and Lund University collaborate on data-driven methods and tools for continuously evolving the functionality and performance of smart systems. The main goal of the PhD project is to develop methods and tools to manage the evolution of autonomous, smart and self-adaptive systems. Such systems are requested to operate in environments that are increasingly changing from static, closed and controllable to dynamic, open, and uncontrollable. For instance this is the case of Cyber Physical Systems, Systems-of-Systems, and Internet of Things. The behavior of such systems is jointly determined by their internal structure, by the behaviour of the constituents of the system, and by the inputs received from both environment and end-users. The research will be conducted in close collaboration with industry.
For more information please contact Ass. Prof Patrizio Pelliccione via email: patrizio@chalmers.se or phone +46 31-772 1050.  

Human-Computer Interaction (HCI): Rich and natural interaction

The WASP project Interaction and Communication with Autonomous Agents in Sensor-Rich Environments, is a collaboration between Chalmers, Linköping University, and Lund University. The intended research will be conducted in the field of smart and natural interaction with high dimensional data. From a human interaction perspective, offering user interfaces to control and benefit from digital cognitive companions is a novel and challenging task. In particular, the investigation will regard the shift from desktop humans­in­the­loop communication, where basic feedback is provided mostly in real-time for low-level control, to humans­on­the­loop applications, where tasks are achieved by massive remote autonomous systems (e.g., robots, physics-based simulations, etc.) without significant human intervention.
For more information please contact Professor Morten Fjeld via email: fjeld@chalmers.se or phone +46 31-772 1027. 

 

 

Control of Autonomous Vehicles in Complex Traffic with Safety Constraints

The WASP project Automated Transport Systems, includes collaboration between Chalmers, KTH, Lund University, and Linköping University. Automated transport systems must be safe and efficient. Therefore, the goal for this PhD project is to develop control algorithms for safe and energy efficient path planning and decision taking in autonomous driving. This will be done with the use of model-based control techniques that incorporate predictive information. This is, typically, done with model predictive controllers (MPCs) operating in real-time, which in most cases entails a tradeoff between computational demands and optimality. The project will focus on addressing this tradeoff by looking beyond the standard MPC techniques of linearization. Techniques, such as convex relaxations, time-to-space transformations, variable changes, model abstractions, approximations and bi-level optimization will be of main interest. The project will heavily rely on applied non-linear programming and direct and indirect optimal control.

For more information please contact Prof Jonas Sjöberg via email: jonas.sjoberg@chalmers.se or phone +46 31 772 1855, or Assistant Prof Nikolce Murgovski via email: nikolce.murgovski@chalmers.se or phone +46 31 772 4800. To apply, please click on the header link.

 
 

The WASP project Automated Transport Systems, includes collaboration between Chalmers, KTH, Lund University, and Linköping University. Automated transportation systems can benefit greatly from explicit communication between vehicles, for perception, coordination, and decision support. Communication between vehicles using large bandwidths and large antenna arrays can provide fast and reliable data exchange, and at the same time enable accurate and low-cost position and orientation estimation.  Our goal in this project is the co-design of the communication and positioning methods, tailored to the control requirements of automated transport.
For more information please contact Associate Prof Henk Wymeersch via email henkw@chalmers.se or phone +46 31 772 1765.