PhD in Robotics

PhD Studentship available on the RAINZ CDT programme at the University of Oxford./nProject Overview/nProject title: Long-Term 3D Change Detection of Industrial Facilities/nSupervisors:/nProf Maurice Fallon/nCohort research challenge:/nLong-term autonomous monitoring and maintenance of assets/nYear 1 MSc Course:/nMSc Robotics/nYear 2 – 4 PhD Location:/nUniversity of Oxford/nAbstract:/nNuclear facilities require regular inspection to monitor specific locations (for example valves, levers and read-offs) but also generally around the facility to identify the presence or disappearance of plant or equipment as well as more subtle changes such as the growth of a crack or the spread of corrosion./nIn this project we will use emerging 3D visual sensing technologies such as implicit neural rendering (NeRF, Gaussian Splatting) and Geometric Foundation Models (MapAnything, VGGT) to infer 3D change from a much simpler sensing source – the humble camera. The project will pair this direction with fundamental research into multi-session visual SLAM and semantic segmentation to develop a scalable, 4D (3D plus time) representation of an industrial facility suitable for verification of condition or detection of change over time./nFunding:/nThis 4-year studentship covers tuition fees at Home student rate, a tax-free stipend, and a Research Training and Support Grant. Funding for this project is provided by the EPSRC and Sellafield.