Research Fellow in Robot Manipulation for Fruit Picking (Fixed Term)

School of Computer Science

Location:  Brayford
Salary:   From £32,548 per annum
This post is full time and fixed term until 31st March 2019.
Closing Date:   Saturday 11 November 2017
Interview Date:   Friday 24 November 2017 
Reference:  COS454

The University of Lincoln is seeking to appoint a Postdoctoral Research Fellow for Robot Fruit Picking. The successful candidates will be employed as part of the Automato project (Innovate UK), which will develop an automated robotic picking system for fresh vine tomatoes. The project is a close collaboration between the University of Lincoln and Xihelm.

We are looking to recruit a postdoctoral Research Fellow specialized in research and software development in at least one of the following fields:

• Robot control systems
• Motion planning
• Robot grasping
• Robot learning (learning from demonstrations, reinforcement learning, deep learning)

Primary tasks of the successful candidates include (not exclusively):

• Control of the robot arm, gripper and cutting mechanism
• System integration for the tomato picking prototype
• Vision guided targeting of the crop and obstacle avoidance
• Cut-point and grasp point detection using machine learning techniques
• Vision guided learning to improve the picking motion

Applicants should have, or are expect to soon obtain, a PhD (or equivalent) in a relevant area. Excellent mathematical skills and coding skills (C++/Python, ROS) are required as well as experience with robots.

The Research Fellowship offers the opportunity to engage in international collaboration within an ambitious team, 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 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 Lincoln School of Computer Science. 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 mentor and co-supervise PhD students working in the project team will also be available to outstanding candidates.

Informal enquiries about the post can be made to Prof Gerhard Neumann (email: gneumann@lincoln.ac.uk).