Connectionists: PhD opportunity in embodied intelligence

[Pearce, Timothy C. (Dr.)]

Dear colleagues.

Exciting PhD opportunity! Fully funds fees for UK. Deadline this week.

Embodied AI capable of collaborating autonomously and trustworthily with humans in unstructured tasks and environments.

Join our team BERG https://le.ac.uk/engineering/research/berg and DANILab https://www.danilab.org/ !

Project with Daniel Zhou Hao<https://www.linkedin.com/in/zhou-hao/> in CMS

Project title: Embodied Intelligence for Trustworthy Robotic Autonomy in Unconstructed Environments

Background: This PhD project addresses the challenge of achieving trustworthy robotic autonomy in dynamic, unstructured environments—such as hazardous manufacturing facilities, orbital and planetary space robotic operations, or deep-sea installations. While today’s robots can perform impressive tasks, they often lack the safety, reliability, and transparency required to earn human trust. This research focuses on Embodied Intelligence, emphasising accurate perception and spatial understanding to guide robots’ decision-making and adaptability amid real-world uncertainties.

State-of-the-art methods integrate Vision-Language Models (VLMs) and multi-agent architectures, encoding sensor and control inputs into shared representations that inform actions. However, these approaches have rarely been tested in highly unstructured scenarios, often struggling with the Sim2Real gap and limited generalisation beyond their initial training conditions. To address these gaps, this project will combine Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLMs), reinforcement learning, and synthetic scenario generation. Industrial datasets and generative AI techniques will support the creation of diverse, photorealistic training conditions that better reflect complex operational environments.

Please contact Daniel Zhou Hao<https://www.linkedin.com/in/zhou-hao/> or myself to discuss t.c.pearce at le.ac.uk<mailto:t.c.pearce at le.ac.uk>

Application link and more project details here  https://le.ac.uk/study/research-degrees/funded-opportunities/epsrc-dla  and further project details here https://le.ac.uk/-/media/uol/docs/study/funded-ops/2025-projects/epsrc-dla/hao-epsrc-dla-phd-studentship-project.docx


Application deadline: 31st January 2025
Start date: 22 September 2025

Best, Tim.

--

Tim C. Pearce, PhD FInstP SFHEA (he/him/his)

Reader in Bioengineering



Biomedical Engineering Research Group (BERG)
School of Engineering
University of Leicester | University Road | Leicester | LE1 7RH | UK

t: +44 (0)116 223 1290
e: t.c.pearce at le.ac.uk

w: https://le.ac.uk/people/tim-pearce

w: https://le.ac.uk/engineering/research/berg
li: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tim-pearce-808aaa83/


shared calendar: here<https://outlook.office365.com/owa/calendar/97def62d5929470cad007b8b5ba0b354@leicester.ac.uk/49a25705a2c448018ebdf65992a4126c6579692957646256408/calendar.html>


[cid:8aecbabd-c26b-4aca-a612-d0c859cacf46]



-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/pipermail/connectionists/attachments/20250128/d8cfddd4/attachment.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image.png
Type: image/png
Size: 9113 bytes
Desc: image.png
URL: <http://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/pipermail/connectionists/attachments/20250128/d8cfddd4/attachment.png>