Human-Robot Teaming with remotely deployed robot fleets

Supervisor: Dr Manolis Chiou

Project Description

Fleets of robots are increasingly deployed across a variety of applications, including disaster re-sponse, infrastructure inspection, security, logistics, and healthcare. In these settings, humans re-main essential, monitoring and supervising, intervening, and collaborating with robots at different levels of abstraction. These Human-Robot Teams have the potential to combine the strengths and complementary competencies of both agents (i.e., human and robot).

However, enabling seamless Human-Robot Teaming (HRT) with multiple robots presents fundamen-tal challenges: humans and robots must maintain shared situational awareness, coordinate their ac-tions under dynamic conditions, adapt to changing circumstances by dynamically allocating attention and control authority, and ultimately communicate and interact seamlessly at various levels of ab-straction. Unlike single-robot systems, fleet operations amplify complexity, as operators face in-creased cognitive demands and the interaction paradigm must scale beyond one-to-one control to-wards one-to-many collaboration. Current approaches often fail to support the fluid, adaptive team-ing that characterizes effective human-human collaboration.

This PhD project will address critical challenges in enabling seamless and effective HRT with robot fleets. We seek candidates who will propose and pursue novel research in one or more of the follow-ing interconnected directions:

Supervisory interfaces and intelligent support: Develop multimodal interfaces (combining visualiza-tions, gestures, natural language, and auditory channels) and intelligent assistant agents that support operators in supervising fleet operations. These systems will proactively filter information, highlight anomalies, diagnose problems, and recommend interventions to reduce cognitive workload and maintain situational awareness across multiple robots.

Variable Autonomy: Develop frameworks for dynamically adjusting robot levels of autonomy based on task demands, environmental conditions, and human/robot capabilities and state.

Shared Understanding between humans and robots: Develop computational shared mental models and shared situational awareness that enable the HRT to maintain common ground.

Your research direction will be shaped by the synergy between your interests and background, which you will refine into a detailed proposal during the first months of the PhD. We welcome candidates with backgrounds in Computer Science, Engineering, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Cognitive Sci-ence, or Human-Computer Interaction. Strong programming skills and experience with autonomous systems or human factors research are particularly valuable.

The PhD student will receive tuition fees at the home rate and a London stipend at QMUL stipend rates (currently in 2025/26 of £21,874 per year, to be confirmed for 2026/27) annually during the PhD period, which can span for 3 years.

For more information about the project, please contact Manolis Chiou (m.chiou@qmul.ac.uk).

Supervisor Dr Manolis Chiou (he/his) – m.chiou@qmul.ac.uk Personal Homepage: https://manolischiou.com/ Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=aCwU14gAAAAJ&hl=en Centre for Multimodal AI https://www.seresearch.qmul.ac.uk/cmai/people/mchiou/

Centre for Human-Centred Computing https://www.seresearch.qmul.ac.uk/chcc/people/mchiou/

Centre for Advanced Robotics @ Queen Mary https://www.robotics.qmul.ac.uk/

How to apply

Queen Mary is interested in developing the next generation of outstanding researchers and decided to invest in specific research areas. Applicants should submit their application following the instructions at: http://eecs.qmul.ac.uk/phd/how-to-apply/

The application should include the following:

· CV (max 2 pages)

· Cover letter (max 4,500 characters) stating clearly in the first page whether you are eligible for a scholarship as a UK resident (https://epsrc.ukri.org/skills/students/guidance-on-epsrc-studentships/eligibility)

· Research proposal (max 500 words)

· 2 References

· Certificate of English Language (for students whose first language is not English)

· Other Certificates

Please note that to qualify as a home student for the purpose of the scholarships, a student must have no restrictions on how long they can stay in the UK and have been ordinarily resident in the UK for at least 3 years prior to the start of the studentship. For more information please see: (https://epsrc.ukri.org/skills/students/guidance-on-epsrc-studentships/eligibility)

Application Deadline

The deadline for applications is the 5th January 2026.

For specific enquiries, contact Dr Manolis Chiou at m.chiou@qmul.ac.uk

For general enquiries contact Mrs Melissa Yeo at m.yeo@qmul.ac.uk (administrative enquiries) or Dr Arkaitz Zubiaga at a.zubiaga@qmul.ac.uk (academic enquiries) with the subject “EECS 2026 PhD scholarships enquiry”.