Research Topics

The following broad topics serve as a starting point for students to start gathering ideas about what they would like to research. During your application, you will be asked to submit your research domain and topic of interest. After admission, you will propose your research questions to the ASE Team and together a decision will be made for the project. We appreciate your own contributions and ideas!

Navigation & Control

Autonomous agency is all about understanding the environment and having the ability to independently make decisions. This topic encompasses a wide range of research possibilities from how the environment is sensed, to how the Rover uses it's actuators to navigate.

Computer Vision

Advancements in image processing and machine learning opened new possibilities for autonomy. While being a vast and complex field of research, computer vision lends itself as a very suitable research field for this project.

Performance Engineering

Software running on embedded devices inside of vehicles or other autonomous systems is extremely performance critical. Writing performant code comes with its own set of unique challenges that can be explored with the Rover.

Systems Engineering & Energy Management

Robotics is yet another field that can heavily benefit from optimizing systems software such as the operating system running the robot's control system. Optimizing for energy efficient code is especially important for battery powered autonomous agents. The Rover lends itself as a useful tool for exploring software architectures that optimize for energy efficiency.

Fuzzing and Software Security

With the added dimension of hardware, the attack surface of embedded devices grows significantly and must be rigorously tested. Fuzzing has proven to be an effective method in finding critical software vulnerabilities and can aid you in discovering bugs that lie on the software/hardware boundary.

Software Testing

Safety critical industries require and depend on thorough software testing and program verification. Using the provided software and hardware platform can act as a model for imitating real world safety critical systems.

Simulation

Throughout history, leveraging a digital twin further progressed the acceleration of advancement by being able to test in a virtual environment. This project opens research opportunities in understanding the bridge between the physical world and its simulated virtual twin.

Artifical Intelligence

In an era where developments in AI go incredibly fast, leveraging the mobility and flexibility of the Rover can bring new solutions to existing problems. With neural engine hardware acceleration on board, or using hybrid AI models, many research opportunities arise.