PERSEUS - PhD Candidate within Digital Twins for Future Mobility and Infrastructure Solutions

Updated: over 1 year ago
Deadline: 01 Sep 2022

This is NTNU

NTNU is a broad-based university with a technical-scientific profile and a focus in professional education. The university is located in three cities with headquarters in Trondheim.

At NTNU, 9,000 employees and 42,000 students work to create knowledge for a better world.

You will find more information about working at NTNU and the application process here.

   


...

(Video unable to load from YouTube. Accept cookie and refresh page to watch video, or click here to open video)



About the position

The Department of Computer Science (IDI) is looking for a PhD. candidate in the area of digital twins and artificial intelligence for a sustainable and carbon-neutral mobility future. The main aim of this project is to build a static digital twin of the MobilityLab’s focus area that will act as a baseline for all further simulations and will be extended to be able to receive dynamic information from IoT sensors. An accurate digital representation of the focus area will be created, based on existing geometric information and high-resolution aerial photographs. Raw data is already available for the project either as public or previously acquired datasets, additionally during the project more raw-data will be acquired with our in-house full scale research platforms (Kia e-Niro with an NVIDIA DriveWorks stack as well as dedicated high-resolution surveying drones). The final aim of the project is full automation of the conversion process from raw data to a usable digital twin representation (i.e. AI based methods and handling of Big Data arriving in real-time from the research platforms). Furthermore, improving the model via automatic texturing and interactive editing will also be investigated (e.g. Instant NeRF or Block NeRF). The intended platform for the development of the digital twin will be NVIDIA Omniverse. 

The PhD position is part of a new large interdisciplinary initiative called Mobility Lab Elgeseter. The center is divided into the three focus areas 1) stakeholder needs for good mobility, 2) mobility as a system / transportation models, and 3) digital technologies for green mobility, that will work closely together to realize innovative and sustainable future mobility solutions in the urban environment. Within area 3) various enabling technologies will be used to automate the process of building and using digital mobility infrastructure twins (i.e. holistic/unified, life cycle, hierarchical, integrated, dynamic/updated representations of the physical road network) for collaboration, simulation, carbon/energy footprint calculations, road condition monitoring, predictive maintenance, automated traffic management and other forms for value creation (general knowledge will be developed that can be scaled up and used elsewhere).


To realize the objectives of focus area 3 several PhD candidates with partly overlapping competences will work closely together, each focusing on one of the following technology areas: 1) baseline Digital Mobility Twin (DMT) using site surveys and available geo-located data (this PhD position), 2) dynamically updated DMT using IoT, sensors, 5G and edge computing, 3) BigData and AI to create value from all the sensor data sent from the physical twin, e.g. in the form of decision support and automation, 4) autonomy and simulation to train AI agents and simulate “what-if” scenarios, and 5) XR and Visualization to interact with the DMT throughout its life-cycle (construction and use) and increase citizens engagement and feedback before things have been built physically.

Throughout the overall Mobility Lab Elgeseter project there will be tight interaction with the other two focus areas, e.g. providing sensor data and visualizations to the two other areas, get feedback from area 1) regarding user needs and integrate transportation models from 2) in the DMT.

This PhD project is also part of the PERSEUS doctoral program that will contribute to a smarter, safer, and more sustainable future by approaching important challenges within key enabling technologies (Big data and AI, Digital Twins, Internet of Things, Extended Reality, and Information and Cyber Security). PERSEUS is a collaboration between NTNU, 11 top-level academic partners in 8 European countries, and 8 industrial partners within sectors of high societal relevance. The PERSEUS PhD candidates will have the opportunity to collaborate with researchers in the partner institutions and in other project consortia, and benefit from these collaborative research and education activities. This includes a 2–3 month international stay and a 1-2 month national stay with one of the PERSEUS partners.

The position's working place is NTNU campus in Trondheim. 

Your immediate leader is Head of Department.



Similar Positions