(part of ‘Developing a safer and smarter transport system through advances in automation and intelligent mobility’ mini-CDT)

The Project:

The vision of future transport is increasingly based on the concept of Intelligent Mobility (IM) where the connected capabilities of partially and fully autonomous vehicles, road infrastructure and traffic management systems place people and goods at the heart of the transport system. Together, road accidents and congestion cost the UK £50 billion a year. New intelligent technologies could deliver a step change in safety and mobility but they bring many research challenges. This mini-CDT will focus on five, strategically selected areas of research in particular:

(1)    Systems of systems architecture

(2)    Safe and smart mobility

(3)    Connected vehicle technologies

(4)    Smart highways

(5)    Human factors

Aim/objectives:

The objectives of this ground breaking research will be to develop a new integrated approach to support the development of Automated Transport systems, to measure and evaluate the impact of these systems and to develop methods to predict the impact of further systems. Aspects to be evaluated include behavioural response to the use of AT based on field trial and naturalistic driving data, impact on safety, congestion and mobility based on travel data and simulations. Statistical modelling and other methods will be used to predict outcomes of future systems. This research programme will need a versatile approach that can bring together several knowledge bases from the human factors, transport engineering and statistical analysis domains.

This PhD will be based within Loughborough Design School in collaboration with the School of Civil and Building Engineering. The studentship is for three years and is intended to start in October 2015. The studentship provides a stipend of £13,863 per annum plus tuition fees at the UK/EU rate (currently £3,996 p.a.) for up to three years. International (non EU) students may apply but will need to find the difference in fees between those for a ‘UK/EU’ and ‘international’ student themselves. Non-UK applicants must meet the minimum English language requirements, details available here:http://www.lboro.ac.uk/international/englang/index.htm

The studentship is open to graduates from disciplines including Civil Engineering, Systems Engineering, Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Computer Science and Statistics who are interested in autonomous transport systems, data fusion and statistical modelling. The minimum entry qualification is a 2.1 Honours degree or equivalent. Please add this outline proposal to your application.

For an informal discussion, please contact Professor Pete Thomas at p.d.thomas<στο>lboro.ac.uk

To apply, please complete the online application using the following link:https://luis.lboro.ac.uk/web_apx/f?p=100:1

The closing date for applications is 31 March 2015

Interviews will take place week commencing 20 April 2015

Please quote the following reference when applying: GS15CBE2/M1