Autonomous Exploration of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Swarms

Autonomous exploration is an important application of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) swarm systems, where a team of networked UAVs are coordinated to explore an unknown environment collaboratively. This technique has earned significant research interest due to its usefulness in search and rescue, fault detection and monitoring, localization and mapping, etc. In this project, a novel cooperative exploration strategy needs to be developed for multiple UAVs to reduce the overall task completion time and energy costs.

Students who have an interest in the following research areas are welcome:

• Deep reinforcement learning
• Path planning and control
• Robotics and autonomous vehicles

Durham University

Durham University is a world top-100 university and is ranked the 6th in the UK. As a member university of the elite Russell Group, Durham University focuses on research excellence delivered by world-leading academics. It is the third oldest university in England, following Oxford and Cambridge, with the campus’s Cathedral and Castle being a UNESCO world heritage. It is located at Durham in North East England – one of the safest cities in the UK with an affordable living cost.

Robotics research at the Department of Computer Science

We have made strategic investments in foundational and applied robotics research including establishing the Perception Systems Lab, Biohybrid Robotics Lab and Swarm Robotics Lab. Each of these benefits from unique expertise in autonomous systems, from biohybrid interactions with insects to bio-inspired algorithms for multi-robot systems and autonomous perception for vehicles. Recently we have broadened our portfolio to include Space Robotics, with an emphasis on manipulation and exploration technologies. Our facilities, valued at over £1 million, include advanced robotics platforms, a sensor-equipped test vehicle, high-resolution sensors, and cutting-edge NVIDIA GPU clusters dedicated to AI and machine learning research. These resources are complemented by access to Bede, a supercomputer for the N8 universities to provide infrastructure for large-scale simulations and computational research. Our labs support interdisciplinary initiatives spanning environmental monitoring, bioinspired robotic research and healthcare.

Entry Requirements

• A relevant undergraduate or master’s degree with good scores.
• Knowledge of artificial intelligence, control systems, and robotics
• Meet Durham’s English requirements (https://www.dur.ac.uk/study/international/entry-requirements/english-language-requirements/).

How to Apply

Please send an email with your resume, transcripts, and any supporting documents to Dr Junyan Hu (junyan.hu@durham.ac.uk) for an initial discussion.