Fully Funded PhD in Cooperative UAVs and CAVs for Smart Cities at Coventry University and Institut Teknologi Bandung Coventry University in United Kingdom

PhD opportunity for September 2026 in Cooperative UAVs and CAVs Integration for Efficient Autonomous Service Delivery in Smart Cities, offered through a collaboration between Coventry University and Institut Teknologi Bandung. The project sits within the SeRCAS Lab and the Flight Mechanics and Operations Research Group, and focuses on autonomous systems, smart cities, UAVs, CAVs, intelligent transportation systems, edge computing, graph neural networks, Markov decision processes, and risk-aware optimisation.

The research investigates how heterogeneous UAV fleets can cooperate with ground connected and autonomous vehicles acting as mobile edge-computing platforms. Core topics include cooperative path planning, task redistribution, computation offloading, coalitional-game theory, and safety-aware mission planning under dynamic and partially known environments. The work will be validated through simulation and a small-scale indoor UAV-CAV testbed using DJI Tello EDU, Sphero RVR+, and Raspberry Pi nodes.

This is a fully funded PhD with tuition fees and bursary supported by LPDP, PDDI, or potentially ITB/Coventry University. The programme is full-time for 4 years and starts in September 2026. The post states that applicants must be of Indonesian nationality.

Applicants should have a master degree or strong first degree in a relevant engineering, science, or computing discipline. Helpful experience includes UAV control, robotics, optimisation, simulation, machine learning, vehicular networks, mobile edge computing, and tools such as AirSim, Gazebo, ns-3, Python, MATLAB, ROS, Raspberry Pi, DJI Tello EDU, or Sphero RVR+.

Deadline: 30 April 2026. Interview dates: 4–8 May 2026. For inquiries, contact Dr. Javensius Sembiring at [email protected] or the listed supervisors in the project page.