The Pervasive Systems research group at the University of Twente is looking for a highly motivated PhD candidate to perform research and development on integrating heterogeneous information from multiple sources.
This research project focuses on the effective control and data integration of
drone swarms: combining heterogeneous information from different sources in a meaningful way is a complicated task. Each information source may contribute differently to the overall picture, with variations in data types, sampling times, and resolutions. Despite these differences, a consistent and reliable result must be delivered to a human observer. When multiple drones explore an environment, they need to be controlled effectively as a group, and their sensed data must be combined regardless of each drone’s relative position in the swarm. Missing data must be inferred from past observations or by integrating other data sources.
This PhD project focuses, part of the large national STEADFAST project, and addresses two main challenges:
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Information Fusion: Combining sensed data and state information from multiple drones in a consistent and resilient manner, even when faced with missing, mislabelled, or corrupted information.
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Control Coordination: Managing the relative positions of drones within the swarm to ensure effective context awareness.