PhD in maritime technology

The PhD research project is part of the new Norwegian Maritime AI Centre, led by NTNU. /nDigitalization and AI are transforming society at an unprecedented pace. Integrating artificial intelligence (AI) into the maritime industry is not just a trend but a shift that is redefining the future. The maritime industry is now embracing AI with great enthusiasm, and the mission of the Norwegian Maritime AI Center is therefore to accelerate operationalization of AI in the maritime value chains. /nThe objective of this PhD project is to develop learning-based methods for maritime tracking and prediction in time- and safety-critical applications. Artificial intelligence techniques will be utilized in order to improve detection capabilities, target recognition and shape estimation, data association, as well as intention prediction, beyond the state of the art.  In order to support machine learning, the project will make use of historical radar recordings from several vessels as training data. The project will also study how state-of-the-art radar tracking can be used to record additional training data in an efficient and automatic manner, and how simulations can support data augmentation. Key deliverables of this project will be a multi-target radar tracker that learns to utilize radar targets’ amplitude signatures for data association and state estimation, and learning-based prediction models that anticipate the future motion of vessels seen in the radar data, based on the radar data, local geography and historical patterns. The methods are to implemented and verified in real-time using dedicated hardware such as graphical processing units. The PhD candidate will interact with other PhD candidates, researchers, companies and governmental agencies in the center. Together you will pursue different applications and explore different AI methodologies./nThe PhD candidate will be supervised by Professor Edmund Førland Brekke.