[DL] A PhD position in Correct-By-Design of Autonomous Systems

[Yehia Abd Alrahman]

A fully funded 5-year Ph.D. position in Computer Science and Engineering
with the subject “Space-Aware Synthesis of Situated Autonomous Systems” is
open at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Chalmers |
University of Gothenburg, Sweden. We are looking for excellent and
motivated candidates. This is a joint call at our department with several
projects and is limited to a maximum of 4 projects being funded in this
round. Thus, only highly qualified applicants will be funded.

The Ph.D. position that I am advertising will be hosted by the Formal
Methods (FM) research unit and supervised by Dr. Yehia Abd Alrahman.  Our
unit (and department as a whole) has excellent research groups that work on
Modelling and Verification problems, that may intersect with research in
control and AI.



The objective of the Ph.D. project is to develop novel methods and
algorithms for automatic production of correct-by-design situated
autonomous systems. That is, systems that live on autonomous machines (such
as robots) and populate a shared physical space. Such machines can
influence each other by merely moving/modifying the space. Situated
Autonomous systems are expected to operate while co-existing with other
machines and/or humans. Thus, there is a pressing demand to make them safe,
reliable, and robust to sudden changes.



Consider for example autonomous cars: these cars share the road as a
driving space and need to handle all traffic situations such as changing
lanes, negotiating junctions, etc., and additionally to respond robustly to
the driver and/or a pedestrian’s sudden intervention, while ensuring the
safety on the road. According to the automotive industry standard ISO26262,
a self-driving car may need to be tested for 255 million miles without
having accident to be verified “fully safe” on the road. Clearly, testing
is very expensive and is shown to have low coverage in distributed
settings. Indeed, it is very hard to reproduce the error by simply testing
for a longer time.



We will use Formal Methods instead, and more specifically Controller
Synthesis as a design technique. Our goal is to extend existing synthesis
techniques to permit native reasoning about time-space related design
properties. The work in this project is on the intersection of computer
science, control theory, and AI.



 The thesis will be focused on several aspects of modelling, reasoning, and
verification of Situated Autonomous Systems. More specifically, we will
target the following:


   - Define mathematical formalisms that describe the dynamics (or the
   semantics) of the system both in Space and Time. The main challenge here is
   to exploit the finite variability of the physical space to provide
   representative and compact discrete abstractions that account to the
   movement in space.
   - We will study Spatio-Temporal logics and identify efficient fragments
   that permit reasoning about space mobility as time passes.
   - Provide online synthesis algorithms that natively analyse a snapshot
   of the currently observed space and provide short-time horizon control
   plans.

Ideal candidates are expected to have knowledge in one or more of the
following topics:


   - Spatio-temporal reasoning.
   - Controller synthesis or Supervisory control (Knowledge in model-based
   reinforcement learning techniques is a plus)
   - Concurrency or applications of Automata in Synthesis and Control.

Please use the instructions in the Joint call (Link below) to apply. More
information about the project are available in the project link below.



Links:

Project description: can be found here Inst.doktorander
<https://chalmers-my.sharepoint.com/:f:/g/personal/sannapet_chalmers_se/Es7l3kX-Xw1Iu1Gx-QZvSaAB1csKLA_SPSQL0YyyeBljbw?e=j56Mfz>



Joint call:
https://web103.reachmee.com/ext/I005/1035/job?site=7&lang=UK&validator=9b89bead79bb7258ad55c8d75228e5b7&job_id=31163



Note: If you are interested, please forward any informal inquiries directly
to me, before submitting your application.



Many Thanks,

Yehia

Plain text email: yehiaa [at] chalmers [dot] se
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