PhD Position in Extended Reality for Safe and Active Mobility

Be part of the SAFE MOVE project that brings together universities, industry partners, public authorities, and mobility stakeholders to improve the safety, inclusiveness, and uptake of active and micromobility modes in urban environments.

As part of the SAFE-MOVE project, this PhD position will focus on employing immersive eXtended Reality (XR) and wearable sensing technologies to systematically study interaction dynamics and the relationship between objective risk, perceived safety, stress, and comfort across diverse user groups, mobility modes (e.g., pedestrians, cyclists, micromobility users, and wheelchair users), and infrastructure contexts.

In this role, you will:

• Develop a common XR multimodal ontology framework and scalable XR simulators representing diverse urban traffic scenarios and infrastructure types while ensuring portability and transferability across XR simulator platforms.
• Conduct XR experiments to investigate behavioral, cognitive, psychological, and physiological responses of different road users and derive stress, comfort, and perceived safety indicators.
• Validate XR findings through mixed-reality and real-world experiments.
• Design and evaluate XR-based safety training programmes for active and micromobility users.
• Collaborate closely with project partners across different work packages, such as integrating XR with microscopic traffic simulation, developing explainable behavioural and safety models using behavioural data, surrogate safety measures, and AI techniques.
• Contribute to the development of the SAFE MOVE integrated UMO data platform that ingests heterogeneous data types generated in the SAFE MOVE pilots.

The PhD project is conducted at the Department of Transport and Planning (T&P) of Delft University of Technology. You will be a member of the Mobility in eXtended Reality Lab (MXR Lab) and the Urban Mobility Observatory (UMO) lab, where research on mobility behaviour and data collection systems is undertaken.

Job requirements

We are looking for a motivated candidate who has:

• A Master’s degree in a relevant field (e.g., transportation, human-computer interaction, mechanical engineering, cognitive science, or related disciplines).
• A solid background and strong interest in XR technologies and skills in developing XR applications using Unity/Unreal game engine.
• Strong and demonstrable experimental skills, including experimental design, experimental setup, conducting experiments, and data collection.
• Strong analytic and programming skills (e.g., Python, C#) with proficiency in statistics.
• Strong skills in qualitative and quantitative analysis.
• Excellent communication and writing skills in English and the ability to collaborate with diverse stakeholders.
• Prior research and work experience that is relevant to this PhD position is a bonus.

Salary and benefits

Salary and benefits are in accordance with the Collective Labour Agreement for Dutch Universities, increasing from €3059 - €3881 gross per month, from the first year to the fourth year based on a full‑time contract (38 hours), plus 8% holiday allowance and an end‑of‑year bonus of 8.3%.

Conditions of employment

Doctoral candidates will be offered a 4‑year period of employment, typically in two employment contracts: an initial 1.5‑year contract with a go/no‑go progress assessment within 15 months, followed by an additional contract for the remaining 2.5 years, assuming satisfactory performance.

Relocation support

TU Delft offers relocation assistance and has a Dual Career Programme to support accompanying partners with their job search in the Netherlands.

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