Thesis Work on Safe Teleoperation of Autonomous Operations in Underground Environment

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This Position reports to:

R&D Team Lead

Your role and responsibilities

This thesis addresses the challenge of safe remote teleoperation of autonomous charging robots in underground mines. Remote teleoperation from a surface control room removes personnel from danger but introduces a critical challenge: 5G network latency is highly variable due to tunnel propagation, equipment interference, and radio shadows. Uncompensated latency causes arm overshoots during operation while handling explosive material, risking collision damage and hazard. The goal is to develop and validate a latency-compensated teleoperation system with a predictive safety fallback mechanism that maintains the operation accuracy despite communication delays, while ensuring safe autonomous retreat if connectivity degrades unexpectedly.

Details:

• Period: January 2027-June 2027, 5 months
• Number of credits: 30 ECTS
• Number of students for this thesis work: 1
• Location: ABB Corporate Research (Västerås)

This thesis will address the following research topics:

• How to guide and control robotic operation in a safety critical mining environment safely?
• How to handle 5G communication delays, packet losses, etc?
• How to develop a network-aware solution to avoid emergency hard stops, etc., to improve the efficiency of the solution?

Goals:

• Design the safety guaranteed control algorithm and evaluate the performance of the solution.

Qualifications for the role

• Strong background in communication, computer science, control, machine learning, or similar disciplines
• Motivated to solve real-world problems using state-of-the-art methods.
• Self-driven and solution oriented.
• Good programming skills.

More about us

Recruiting Manager Linus Thrybom, +46 730 80 9906, will answer your general questions. Supervisors Maryam Sharifi (maryam.sharifi@se.abb.com) and Alf Isaksson (alf.isaksson@se.abb.com) will answer questions about the thesis topic and expectations. 

Positions are filled continuously. Please apply with your CV, academic transcripts, and a cover letter in English.

We look forward to receiving your application!

A future opportunity

This role is part of our talent pipeline, which means it’s not currently open, but we’re always looking for curious minds, bold thinkers, and people who want to make an impact.

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