The Mechatronics & Robotics Research Group at the University of Canterbury is actively engaged in fundamental and applied research of various mobile robotics, and exploits commercial applications. Research opportunities are available to address one or more of the following research issues. (1) Unmanned Area Vehicles for environmental monitoring and measurement: sensing and instrumentation including GPS / INS / GNSS, mini/micro UAV, flying robots, system dynamics modelling and stability control. (2) Autonomous Guided Vehicles: 3d path planning & navigation, machine vision, multi-sensor perception. (3) Autonomous Underwater Vehicles: novel drive & propulsion, dynamic buoyancy control, underwater communication, worm robot. (4) Climbing robot: novel adhesion mechanism, untethered locomotion. (5) Next generation mobility systems / wheelchairs: re-configurable articulated design, multi-functional design (transforming between bed and chair), novel actuation. (6) Micromanipulation for medical applications like cell injection, biomedical robots, thought-controlled robots (7) Robot agents and sensor networks.
The research activities are conducted in by Robotics & Dynamics Control Lab, Mechatronics Lab, Design and Build Lab including and Mechanical Workshop. It is equipped with excellent research facilities including various design-and-build mobile robot platforms, precision Cartesian robot, micromanipulation robot, FPGA & embedded controller development tools, electronics design, wet process and cutting machine for PCB manufacturing, mechanical design (SolidWorks, ANSYS, COSMOS), dSpace, MatLab, LabView; and has access to supercomputers on campus for complex modelling and visualisation.
Funding Notes
The research group works closely with industry partners and research centres including Geospatial Research Centre, Dynamics Control Limited, HIT-Lab, Bio-Engineering Centre, and Hospitals. For New Zealand residents and citizens, University scholarships and grants are available to qualified candidates. International students may apply for UC Doctorial Scholarship, or Premier Scholarship offered by the Department of Mechanical Engineering on a competitive basis. Self-sponsored international PhD students pay the tuition fees as home students. Teaching Assistantships are available to provide partial support. In addition, competitive extramural research funding is being constantly sought after.
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