Marie Curie: PhD in Computational Interaction Models for Automated Driving

Information about the project
We are offering a position as a PhD student in the field of modelling road user behaviour in interaction with automated vehicles. This position is one of 15 PhD-students to be recruited across six universities in Europe to be part of a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Action (MSCA) Innovative Training Network (ITN), funded by the European Commission.

This position is part of the Crash Analysis and Prevention (CAP) unit within the Vehicle Safety division (Department of Mechanics and Maritime Sciences). In the Vehicle Safety division and CAP, researchers conduct world-leading research on topics related to traffic safety. The mission of the unit is to understand why crashes happen and how they can be prevented. This includes understanding crash causation mechanisms related to the road-user behavior as well as (e.g., automated) vehicle and environment factors. We leverage on a deep understanding of these strategies to build effective driver support, active safety, and vehicle automation. We evaluate these strategies using conceptual and mathematical models developed with naturalistic and experimental data. The research group has strong ties to the Swedish automotive industry and participates in national and international projects (EU, US and Japan).

We teach courses in the master’s program in Automotive Engineering at Chalmers University on both the technical and behavioral aspects of traffic safety, active safety systems, and vehicle automation. Student projects at the Master's and Doctoral level are also conducted at CAP.

The overall goal of this 15 student PhD-project, called SHAPE-IT, is to enable rapid and reliable development of safe and user-centered automated vehicles (AVs) for urban environments. Vehicle automation has been identified as a game-changer in transport, promising substantial reductions in road-traffic fatalities while improving mobility. However, the processes to integrate automation in transport have been primarily technology-focused, with insufficient consideration given to how users both inside and outside of the AVs will interact with AVs.

The main objective of SHAPE-IT is to facilitate the safe, acceptable (and, ideally, desirable) integration of user-centered and transparent AVs into tomorrow’s mixed urban traffic environments, using both existing and new research methods, designing advanced interfaces and control strategies.

The project aims to deliver a future generation of human factors researchers and engineers with an excellent multidisciplinary (cognitive and behavioral psychology, computer science, and engineering) education.

Specifically, this PhD candidate will expand previous research within CAP on modelling for road-user interaction. Building on state-of-the-art methods for modelling human behaviour, this PhD candidate will investigate how cyclists communicate their intentions in traffic, and which cues they use to predict the behaviour of other road-users and to communicate their intent. This will include modelling cyclist behaviour, to enable AVs to predict cyclist intent, enabling AVs to meet human expectations and not transgressing human comfort boundaries.

The research will be conducted in close collaboration both with the other 14 PhD students in the SHAPE-IT project, and with senior researchers at Chalmers and the other universities involved in SHAPE-IT. The position includes 2-3 longer (1-3 months long) secondments/visits to both industry and other universities. During SHAPE-IT all 15 PhD candidates will join several project wide training activities, covering multiple aspects of the design and assessment of automated vehicles, including human factors and artificial intelligence, in the context of automated vehicles1.

We strongly encourage female applicants to all of these multi-disciplinary research positions, where working together and sharing knowledge and experience across a diverse group of people is fundamental to reach the project goals to build a future of safe and trusted vehicle automation in cities.

Major responsibilities
Your major responsibilities as a PhD student is to pursue your own doctoral studies. You are expected to develop your own scientific concepts and communicate the results of your research verbally and in writing (primarily in English, but at the end of your studies, also at least orally in Swedish). Your research will be supervised by well-reputed senior researchers at the involved department. The PhD studies also includes a number of doctoral courses, reviewing literature, interacting with both industrial companies and other PhD-candidates and senior researchers in the SHAPE-IT project, as well as analysing empirical data, and modeling and using models of human behavior.

As part of SHAPE-IT you are expected to collaborate with other PhD-students in the project, and providing project level training for the other PhD-students on safety assessment methods.

The position generally also includes teaching on Chalmers' undergraduate level or performing other departmental duties corresponding to up to 10 percent of working hours.

About your qualification and application procedure here