Connect-R: industrial-scale self-building modular robotics

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There are many hostile working environments that require sophisticated tasks to be performed, such as the building ofstructures and deployment of tools where there is significant risk to the health and safety of any manual workers involved,high cost of deployment and significant timescales for completion. Examples are Nuclear Decommissioning, Oil and Gas,Mining and Space systems. Common to many of these environments is the extreme difficulty of effective deployment of thesophisticated kind of equipment that replaces human beings.These environments present the following challenges:Hazardous working environments requiring protective equipment and limited time windows for operationLimited access through which to deploy the systemsUnstable structures present that prevent occupationLifting of heavy objects (~50kg) that require mechanical assistanceProcessing of large volumes of liquids (1000s litres)The Connect-R team are a collaborative group of SME, large enterprise, and academics who are developing an industrial-scale self-building modular robotic solution to provide access to work-sites in these hazardous environments.There is scope for the PhD candidate(s) to be involved in many aspects of the project, ranging from design and build of the actuator modules, to task planning and functional decomposition.