PhD Position for Automatic Testing of Autonomous Vehicles

The research group Cyber-Physical Systems of Prof. Matthias Althoff at the Technical University of Munich offers a PhD position in the area of automatic testing of autonomous vehicles. The Technical University of Munich is one of the top research universities in Europe fostering a strong entrepreneurial spirit and international culture.

Expected Starting Date:
01 November 2021-01 March 2022

Closing Date for Applicants:
15 October 2021

Duration:
3 years with a possible extension (individual duration for Postdocs).

Project and Job Description

It is apparent that one cannot rely solely on physical test drives for ensuring the correct functionality of autonomous vehicles. Since physical test drives are costly and time-consuming, it is advantageous to accompany them with computer simulations. However, since most traffic scenarios are not challenging, even simulations are often too time-consuming. The goal of this project is to provide methods and tools for automatically synthesizing challenging test cases for motion planning of autonomous vehicles. This can be seen as a driving test for motion planning algorithms that needs to be passed in order to be used in real vehicles.

To solve this problem, we propose an approach that creates automatically critical driving situations, i.e., situations with a small solution space for avoiding traffic rule violations and collisions. Our approach combines reachability analysis for determining the size of the solution space with optimization techniques to shrink it. The solution space is reduced by shifting the initial states of traffic participants as well as their inputs over time, demanding an immediate and correct action of the vehicle under test.

Our developed methods will be evaluated by numerical experiments using our motion planning benchmark suite CommonRoad (commonroad.in.tum.de). To evaluate the criticality of the generated scenarios, we additionally plan to conduct user studies in our driving simulator to compare measures like the subjectively perceived risk as well as the realism of our synthesized scenarios.

Previous Work
* An example of our previous work on automatic test-case generation of autonomous vehicles can be found here: https://mediatum.ub.tum.de/doc/1545515/564242.pdf
* A previous approach on reachability analysis of autonomous vehicles is described here: https://mediatum.ub.tum.de/doc/1379679/lb6uhqbnwy9fp4hm6de8lus5h.soentges-2018-t-its.pdf

Job Specifications
* Excellent Master’s degree (or equivalent) in computer science, engineering, or related disciplines (typically mathematics, physics).
* Fluency in spoken and written English is required.
* Good programming skills in at least one programming language, e.g. MATLAB, C/C++, Python.
* Highly motivated and keen on working in an international and interdisciplinary team.
* Applicants with strong background in the following fields are preferred:
- Model-based testing
- Motion planning
- Logics
- Robotics
- Autonomous vehicles

Context

The applicant will be directly advised by Prof. Matthias Althoff (http://www6.in.tum.de/en/people/prof-dr-ing-matthias-althoff). Besides excellent skills for conducting innovative science, the candidate should also be talented in implementing research results within the CommonRoad framework and lead teams of students.

Our Offer

PhD remuneration will be in line with the current German collective pay agreement TV-L E13 (around 4300 Euros/month). Technical University of Munich is an equal opportunity employer committed to excellence through diversity. We explicitly encourage women to apply and preference will be given to disabled applicants with equivalent qualifications.

Contact

International candidates are highly encouraged to apply. Please send a complete application (in English or German) including a CV, your Master’s thesis, your full transcript of records and contact details to Felix Gruber ([email protected]). Please do not include a cover letter. We kindly ask you to use the subject line “Application to Automatic Testing of Autonomous Vehicles” in your application email. Further similar job offerings will be announced on https://www.in.tum.de/en/i06/open-positions/scientific-staff/.

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Kontakt: Felix Gruber ([email protected])