Lincoln Institute for Agri-Food Technology

Location:  Lincoln
Salary:   From £33,797 per annum
Please be advised that this post is fixed term for 2 years.
Closing Date:   Friday 30 October 2020
Interview Date:   Friday 20 November 2020
Reference:  COS779A

The University of Lincoln is seeking to appoint one new Postdoctoral Research Associate  to join the Lincoln Agri-Robotics (LAR) centre, the world's first global centre of excellence in agricultural robotics. The successful candidate will be employed as part of our Innovate UK – funded  ISCF TFP science and technology into practice: demonstration project ROBOT HIGHWAYS involving UK’s leading agricultural, communication and robotics experts. This project aims to demonstrate the world’s largest fleet of ground mobile robots and autonomous systems, performing multiple tasks (e.g. crop-care, crop-monitoring, fruit picking, transporting and packing), in a commercial soft-fruit farm, while gathering and processing data for maximising yield and reducing waste. The University’s contributions to the project will include mobile robot autonomy; long-term fleet coordination; learning and predicting activity patterns for better coordination; systems architecture development and system integration.

We are looking to recruit a Postdoctoral Research Associate with relevant experience and/or a strong interest in research areas such as:

• Coordination in multi-robot systems;
• Multi-agent task allocation and scheduling;
• Combinatorial optimisation and scheduling;
• Multi-robot path planning and traffic management;
• Learning systems for dynamic system coordination;
• Systems integration, including ROS.

Applicants should have, or expect to soon obtain, a PhD in a relevant area and hands-on experience in mobile ground robots. You must have excellent mathematical and coding skills (C++/Python, ROS). Specific experience in the agriculture domain is preferred but not required. The post offers the opportunity to engage in collaboration within an ambitious team, to work closely with experts in Lincoln Centre for Autonomous Systems (LCAS) and Lincoln Institute for Agri-food Technologies (LIAT), to work with state-of-the-art robotic hardware and software, and to benefit from excellent support to produce and disseminate original research contributions in the leading international conferences and journals. The post holder will be in a unique position to implement approaches that will be used in commercial agricultural farms. This post will be fixed term for 2 years, with the potential opportunity to excellent opportunities for ongoing career development and progression.

The successful candidate will contribute to the University’s ambition to achieve international recognition as a research-intensive institution and will be expected to design, conduct and manage original research in the above subject areas as well contribute to the wider activities of LIAT. Evidence of authorship of research outputs of international standing is essential, as is the ability to work collaboratively as part of a team, including excellent written and spoken communication skills. Opportunities to teach and supervise postgraduate students, including our MSc programme in Robotics and Autonomous Systems, will also be available to outstanding candidates.

Informal enquiries about the post can be made to Prof. Marc Hanheide (Project PI, email: mhanheide@lincoln.ac.uk) or Dr. Gautham Das (Project CoI, email: gdas@lincoln.a.uk).

As an institutional Athena SWAN Bronze Award holder, we are committed to advancing gender equality in STEM, therefore female applicants are strongly encouraged to apply.