Adaptive Multiagent Decision Making in Multi-Sensor Platforms

About the Project

About the Programme

SPADS trains the next generation of UK defence engineers in cutting-edge and generation-after-next technologies in the areas of artificial intelligence, sensing and processing, and hardware design.

Through this training, which is co-designed with our industry and government partners, you will over four years become a highly qualified professional engineer, develop the solid technical foundations and skills required to work within multidisciplinary projects, as well as critical regulation and security knowledge to work with national and international companies.

The programme is based in Edinburgh and is delivered jointly by the University of Edinburgh and Heriot-Watt University. All students graduate with a joint degree awarded from both universities.

The project

This project is in collaboration with Thales UK and aims to research adaptive multiagent decision-making in complex multi-sensor (land and naval) platforms for practical applications.

Objectives:

• Understand requirements of decision making in complex, multi-sensor (land and naval) platforms.
• Design hierarchical multiagent reasoning and learning framework for adaptive decision-making in multi-sensor platforms.
• Implement and evaluate the framework and algorithms with simulated and real-world data and platforms.

Description:

This thesis research project seeks to develop an AI framework that will enable reliable and efficient decision making by humans operating complex, multi-sensor (land and naval) platforms. This framework will support hierarchical multiagent reasoning and reinforcement learning at different levels of abstraction and over long time horizons, under open-world uncertainty and resource limitations. It will automatically identify and use relevant sensor streams (e.g., camera, LIDAR, GPS, acoustic, meteorological) and commonsense domain knowledge from human experts, presenting information such that it reduces the cognitive burden on the human crew. We will illustrate and evaluate our framework in simulation and on physical data streams from multi-sensor platforms of interest to our project partner.

To Apply: How to apply | SPADS CDT

Equality, diversity and inclusion

The programme aims to promote a culture of inclusion and diversity. In this context, we particularly welcome applications from women and other under-represented groups in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM).

Funding Notes

TechExpert - £31, 000 Stipend

We are pleased to announce that we are part of the TechExpert pilot offering tax free stipends of £31,000 for students entering in session 2026/27 eligible for home fee status.

International students will receive a tax free stipend, for 2025/26 this was £23,112.

Full funding is available for this position.

As part of your funding package you will also a generous research training and support grant (RTSG).

References

Degree 2(i) or better in a computing discipline such as Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, or Physics.

UK nationals only.