PhD position in Swarm robotics
Faculty of Art, Computing, Engineering and Sciences, Sheffield Hallam University
Materials and Engineering Research Institute

Fixed Term for 3 years starting as soon as possible

We have an open position for PhD studentship in the EU funded project GUARDIANS 'Group of Unmanned Assistant Robots Deployed in Aggregative Navigation supported by Scent detection' at Sheffield Hallam University, Materials and Engineering Research Institute (RAE 5) Sheffield, UK.
The GUARDIANS are a swarm of autonomous robots applied to navigate and search an urban ground. The project develops a swarm of autonomous robots that is able to adequately assist and safeguard a human squad leader. The robots navigate autonomously and accompany a human squad-leader. They connect to a wireless ad-hoc network and forward data to the squad-leader and the control station. The network is self-organising, adapts to connection failures by modifying its connections from local up to central connections. The autonomous swarm operates in communicative and non-communicative mode.  
For more information on the project see the homepage of the project:
(Go to the page http://cordis.europa.eu/search/index.cfm and then fill in GUARDIANS).
The PhD research work will focus on the swarm and robot control algorithms for non-communicative swarming, and olfactory based swarming with strong connections to the other swarming modes.
The appointed researcher will be member of the Guardians/View-finder project team and be supervised by the EU project co-ordinator Dr. Jacques Penders and deputy manager Dr. Lyuba Alboul. The researcher will work in and cooperate with a multi disciplinary team covering subjects as computer vision, human robot swarm interface design, geometric algorithms, and sensor technology.


We are looking for an excellent and highly motivated candidate with a good first Master degree (or equivalent) in Computer Science, Mathematics or Engineering and with a strong interest and preferably scientific background in: distributed robotics, swarm intelligence and artificial intelligence. She/he is expected to have good programming and mathematical skills, and to have a positive attitude toward interdisciplinary research and teamwork.
The student will join the Microsystems and Machine Vision group at MERI.
Applications should be sent to one of the project managers, 
preferably before the 25th January:

    Jacques Penders < J.Penders@shu.ac.uk >
    Lyuba Alboul < L.Alboul@shu.ac.uk >
Informal enquires are welcome, and should be directed to the same persons.