I am seeking talented students interested in taking a PhD student position at the Department of Informatics, King’s College London. Some of the available projects related to robotics are:
- Goal-based explanations for autonomous systems and robots: Development of goal reasoning techniques with a focus in assistive robotics domains along with methods to explain the reasoning to a user.
Adaptation and effective communication in collaborative physically Assistive Tasks: Development of techniques to handle the communication and adaptation between the robot and the user during the execution of assistive tasks such as feeding or dressing a user.
Explaining robotic planning decision points along execution: Explainability of planning is usually performed at planning time. The focus of this research will be the explainability of decisions during the execution of the planned actions, instead of when the decision is made. (This one will be in collaboration with IRI, and could be carried out there or at King’s College London).
Enhancing Safety in Robotics by Tackling Blind-Spots and Bias in AI Models: Looking into how to improve safety in assistive robotics by means of explainability, fairness, and errors due to systematic biases. Co-advised with Dr Héctor Menéndez.
If you have questions about the positions or the projects, please contact me by email with a subject line starting with [PhDInterest]. In the email, mention what project you would like to work on from the list of topics above (or any other related research areas), and why you chose it. Generic emails or those including unrelated topics will probably not be answered.
Funding opportunities
Some information about funding options for PhD students can be found below.
- The Department of Informatics has fully funded scholarships (competitive) available for strong applicants (UK and Overseas).
- Students from China can apply to the King’s-China Scholarship Council PhD Scholarships (K-CSC). Positions are fully funded (tuition and stipend). You need to be a citizen and permanent resident of the People’s Republic of China. Applications are typically in January.
- Other funding opportunities can be found here.
For more information about King’s, information about funding, and application instructions, please refer to Computer Science Research PhD.