The Ocean Systems Laboratory at the School of Engineering and Physical Sciences will be part of Robocademy, a new training and research network supported by the European Union's Marie Curie Initial Training Network fund.
The network has received £3.6 million funding to provide training and PhD research for Early Stage Researchers in subsea robotics and autonomous vehicles.
Robocademy will develop key skills and enabling technologies in underwater robotics for the scientific and economic exploration of the oceans. The network will also support multidisciplinary research in robotics, marine technology, marine science, and offshore industry.
The Robocademy fellows will push the state-of-the-art in the area of robust, reliable and autonomous underwater robots. Specialized scientific training modules will enable early-stage researchers to obtain both a sound basis in robotics and an introduction to topics that are specific to their research areas.
This will be complemented with a soft-skills training programme and the opportunity to gain extensive on-site hands-on experience through secondments to maritime industry and oceanographic research institutes.
The network comprises 16 European research institutes and companies and will contribute to meet the demand for highly qualified researchers and engineers in the growing field of underwater systems and robotics.