About me

I am a PhD student in the field of autonomous vehicle research. My doctoral studies are within a collaborative research project between Coventry University and HORIBA MIRA. I am a member of the Institute for Future Transport and Cities (FTC) at Coventry University and the Centre for Connected Autonomous Automotive Research (CCAAR) at HORIBA MIRA.
I have served as reviewer for a number of peer-reviewed journals (IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems, Conference on Intelligent Transportation Systems, Vehicle System Dynamics). I am also a reviewer for funding of international projects through the Horizon Europe Framework Programme.

Email: batschf@coventry.ac.uk

Current work and research

My current work is in the area of scenario-based testing of automated vehicles. I am developing new methods for testing and validating autonomous driving functions by leaveraging digital twins (simulation or SiL) with supervised machine learning.
Within my PhD, I have developed an automated simulation platform under the Bayesian paradigm, where the criticality of logical scenarios is characterised and continously updated, as new scenarios are simulated. This allows for a holistic characterisation of the criticality throughout the logical scenario space, helping to identify safety critical scenarios. It also provides a measure of coverage for a given logical scenario.

I have further research interests in the area of model predictive control for behaviour generation and path planning of autonomous vehicles.

Background

After receiving a Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering from Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Germany, I went on to pursue a consecutive Master of Science in Automotive Engineering from KIT. Additionally, I hold a Master of Engineering degree from Tongji University in Shanghai, China, where I spent two years. I concluded my M.Sc. studies with a research project at Bosch (China) Investment Ltd., leading to the dissertation “Modelling and Degree of Hybridization Optimization of a Fuel Cell-Battery Hybrid Scooter”.