PhD Studentship: State Estimation for Fault Diagnosis and Fault-Tolerant Control of Redundant Robotic Systems

Research theme: Robotics and AI

This 4 year PhD is funded by EPSRC funded by The University of Manchester and Jacobs as their support to the EPSRC-funded Prosperity Partnership (CRADLE: Centre for Robotic Autonomy in Demanding and Long-lasting Environments).

Fully funded for UK home students, but only partial funding is available for overseas students. Successful candidates will receive a tax free stipend set art the UKRI rate (£19,237 for 2024/25).

CRADLE is an EPSRC funded Prosperity Partnership that brings together the industrial experience that Jacobs have in applied robotics and autonomous systems (RAS) with the research expertise at the University of Manchester in this field. The partnership aims to deliver novel and transformational RAS technology that enables robots to be deployed in the most demanding environments, such as space, nuclear, energy generation and urban infrastructure, over long lengths of time.

Robots working in the field usually face challenges unlikely to happen in a controlled environment such as research labs. Therefore, in real-world situations, robots are subject to failures such as faulty sensing and actuation and need to operate under non-ideal conditions to finish the mission until getting back to a repair location. For example, when working in harsh or industrial environments, some arm joints of a mobile manipulator might stop working due to dust ingress or overheating from excessive load. In that case, the robot could leverage the kinematic redundancy to cope with the faulty actuators without compromising the mission execution or, ideally, performance. Analogously, an underwater vehicle with many thrusters should operate appropriately if even some actuators stop working or work with reduced performance.
This work will focus on general state estimation strategies for detecting faults in redundant systems and policies to choose further action, such as mobile manipulators composed of an articulated robotic manipulator serially attached to a mobile base or underwater robots equipped with many thrusters. The developed techniques will be applied to real robots owned by one of the project partners and relevant to the overall research programme.

All projects will be supervised by academics at the University of Manchester and experts in the application of robotic systems at Jacobs, and they will all contain a significant focus on the design and development of practical robotic demonstrators.

Eligibility

Applicants should have or expect to achieve at least a 2.1 honours degree in engineering or computer science or an MSc qualification in Robotics, Electrical & Electronic Engineering, Mechatronic Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Computer Science or other equivalent discipline.

Candidates must meet the School's minimum English Language requirement.

Candidates will be expected to comply with the University's policies and practices of equality, diversity and inclusion.

Applicants will be required to evidence the following skills:

• Creative and innovation potential, ability to think out of the box.
• Motivation of the candidate for inter-disciplinary research.
• Ability to work with both academics and industrialists.
• You must be capable of performing at a very high level.
• You must have a self-driven interest in uncovering and solving unknown problems and be able to work hard and creatively without constant supervision.

Before you apply, please contact the supervisors: Dr Long Zhang, Dr Murilo Marinho and Dr Keir Groves at long.zhang@manchester.ac.uk murilo.marinho@manchester.ac.uk keir.groves@manchester.ac.uk

For more information please visit: https://cradlerobotics.co.uk/phd-opportunities-at-cradle-robotics-and-ai/

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