About the Project
Supervisory team: Dr Mohammad Soorati
Robot swarms can perform complex tasks collectively, but how should humans communicate with and understand these systems? This PhD will develop new approaches for human-swarm interaction, enabling operators to express high-level goals naturally while providing intuitive explanations of what the swarm is doing, why it is doing it, and what will happen next.
Robot swarms offer a powerful approach to complex missions because many autonomous robots can coordinate without requiring humans to control each robot individually. However, this creates a fundamental human-swarm interaction challenge. Humans must communicate high-level intent to a collective system while simultaneously understanding its behaviour, capabilities and limitations.
This PhD will investigate how humans can effectively interact with autonomous robot swarms through communication of intent to the swarm and understanding swarm behaviour. The research could explore how natural human instructions can be translated into appropriate collective behaviours and task allocations. It will investigate how a swarm can communicate its current state, intentions, decisions and emerging problems to a human operator without overwhelming them with information.
A key research goal will be to develop interaction mechanisms that support appropriate levels of abstraction: enabling humans to reason about the swarm as a collective while allowing access to individual robots when required for diagnosis or intervention. The project may explore graphical interfaces, natural-language interaction, explainable AI, adaptive visualisation and mixed-initiative human-swarm teaming.
Building on existing research into operator workload and scalable swarm interaction, the successful candidate will develop and experimentally evaluate new HSI approaches using simulation and/or physical swarm-robotics platforms.
The student will have access to the robotic platforms available in SooratiLab including robot dogs, several ground rovers, quadcopters, robotic arms, etc.
The School of Electronics & Computer Science is committed to promoting equality, diversity inclusivity as demonstrated by our Athena SWAN award. We welcome all applicants regardless of their gender, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation or age, and will give full consideration to applicants seeking flexible working patterns and those who have taken a career break. The University has a generous maternity policy, onsite childcare facilities, and offers a range of benefits to help ensure employees’ well-being and work-life balance. The University of Southampton is committed to sustainability and has been awarded the Platinum EcoAward.
Entry requirements
You must have a UK 2:1 honours degree, or its international equivalent, in one of the following:
- computer science
- robotics
- artificial intelligence
- engineering
- human-computer interaction
- psychology
- cognitive science
- a closely related discipline
Essential skills:
- strong interest in human-robot interaction, autonomous systems, robotics or artificial intelligence
- ability to undertake independent research and critically evaluate scientific literature
- strong programming skills, preferably in Python or a comparable language
Fees and funding
We offer a range of funding opportunities for both UK and international students. Horizon Europe fee waivers automatically cover the difference between overseas and UK fees for qualifying students.
Competition-based Presidential Bursaries from the University cover the difference between overseas and UK fees for top-ranked applicants.
Competition-based studentships offered by our schools typically cover UK-level tuition fees and a stipend for living costs for top-ranked applicants.
Funding will be awarded on a rolling basis, so apply early for the best opportunity to be considered.
For more information, please visit our postgraduate research funding pages.
How to apply
You need to:
- choose programme type (Research), 2027/28, Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences
- select Full time or Part time
- search for programme PhD Computer Science (7089)
- add name of the supervisor in section 2 of the application
Applications should include:
- research proposal
- your CV (resumé)
- 2 academic references
- degree transcripts and certificates to date
- English language qualification (if applicable)
Contact us
Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences
For questions about applying, doctoralcollege-admissions@soton.ac.uk.
Project leader
For an initial conversation, M.Soorati@soton.ac.uk.
