About the Project
The Manipulation and Touch Lab at Imperial College London has funding to support a home PhD student on the topic of Benchmarking Contemporary Tactile Sensors. The project will be supervised by Dr Ad Spiers, an Associate Professor of Robotics and Machine Learning. The Manipulation and Touch Lab is part of the Intelligent Systems and Networks research group and the Imperial Robotics Forum.
Project Summary:
Increasing interest in robotic manipulation has led to recent an explosion in the variety of (commercial and experimental) tactile sensing platforms, which vary in transduction techniques, fabrication methods and processing approaches. While all sensors have their pros and cons, there is currently no clear documentation to allow these sensors to be directly compared, particularly when diverse use cases are considered.
Comparative benchmarking has become an important topic in robotic manipulation within the last decade or so, leading to such efforts as the YCB object set, COMPARE ecosystem and NIST task boards. Clearly, a similar effort would be beneficial for tactile sensing, though the scope and details of such benchmarks are currently unclear.
The developments of relevant and rigorous sensor tests will be the focus of this PhD, which will be actualised via high-precision robotic test equipment and access to multiple tactile sensors from various manufacturers.
We anticipate this research to generate protocols and datasets that will be shared with the international robotics research community, as we have done with our past research outputs.
The Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at Imperial has a long and proud history of world-class research and innovation. It ranked the 1st in the UK (Engineering) in REF 2021 based on the proportion of world-leading research (4*).
Funding:
The PhD studentship is fully funded for and includes home-level tuition fees, a tax-free stipend for three and a half years at the UKRI London rate (approximately £23,805 per year for 2026/27), and support for research expenses and travel to conferences. The post is only open to home applicants.
Qualifications:
Applicants are expected to hold either a Bachelor's (2:1 or higher) and Master's (Merit or higher) or Integrated Master's (Merit or higher) in relevant subjects.
How to Apply:
To make initial enquiries about the position, please send an email to Dr Ad Spiers (a.spiers@imperial.ac.uk) with the subject line 'MTL Tactile PhD'. For queries regarding the application process, please contact eee.pgadmissions@imperial.ac.uk.
Applications must be made via the departmental portal (https://www.imperial.ac.uk/electrical-engineering/study/phd/). Applications received via email will be discarded.
Early applications are encouraged as recruitment is on a rolling basis. Candidates must be able to start at one of the department's fixed entry points (January, April, July, or September). Preference will be given to candidates who can start their studies at an earlier entry point.
Closing Date:
March 31st 2027
About Imperial EEE:
Imperial College London is the UK's only university focussed entirely on science, engineering, medicine and business and we are consistently rated in the top 10 universities in the world. Additional information on the PhD programme in the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering can be found here. The Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at Imperial has a long and proud history of world-class research and innovation. It ranked the 1st in the UK (Engineering) in REF 2021 based on the proportion of world-leading research (4*). We are committed to equality and valuing diversity. We are also an Athena SWAN Silver Award winner, a Stonewall Diversity Champion, a Two Ticks Employer, and are working in partnership with GIRES to promote respect for trans people. We encourage applicants from underrepresented backgrounds to apply.
