School of Engineering

Location:  Lincoln
Salary:   From £33,797 pro rata
Please note, this post is fixed term for 36 months, full time at 1.0 FTE
Closing Date:   Tuesday 06 July 2021
Interview Date:   Monday 12 July 2021
Reference:  COS826

Research Assistant salary from £28,331

Post-Doctoral Research Associate salary from £33,797 

The University of Lincoln and its industrial partner seek to appoint a Research Assistant or a Post-Doctoral Research Associate to join the Lincoln Centre for Autonomous Systems (LCAS). The post, jointly funded by the University of Lincoln and the EPSRC NCNR Hub, will be initially for 36 months. There is a possibility to extend by another 12 months subject to excellent performance and funding availability.

The project comes under the framework of “Sort and segregate nuclear waste”. The overall aim is to automate a commercially available radiation-hardened robotic platform with high-resolution haptic feedback and develop blended autonomy for remote handling in extreme environments, e.g. sort and segregation of nuclear waste. Please refer to the job description for more details on the role requirements. 

Remote handling of waste in extreme environments is challenging, requiring significant effort by human operators tele-operating the existing robotic platform. Autonomous robots are still far beyond the safety demanded by, e.g., the nuclear industry. Hence, by sharing the task of the sorting and segmentation of highly heterogeneous wastes between human and computer intelligence, we aim to offer a step-change in the current process's safety and efficiency; only limited intervention by skilled operators will be needed for such complex tasks.

We are looking for an enthusiastic and passionate individual to join our research team at L-CAS. The post holder is expected to have a masters degree or a PhD in Robotics, Mechatronics, Control Systems, Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Computer Science or similar fields. The post holder will be required to develop the dynamic model of the industrial manipulator, automation solutions for remote manipulation and control software for improving its force guidance. Therefore, previous experience in mathematical modelling, control systems, tele-operation, automation and autonomy is needed. The candidate must have extensive programming experience with ROS, Python and C++. 

Informal enquiries about this post can be made to Prof Mini C. Saaj (msaaj@lincoln.ac.uk) or Dr Amir Ghalamzan Esfahani (aghalamzanesfahani@lincoln.ac.uk)